


Jukebox Symphony

by murderlight



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alcohol, Dick Jokes, Dudes Being Gay, Grimmjow Needs Friends, Humour, Ichigo Is Oblivious, M/M, Power Ballads, Rivals, Slow Burn, guys being dudes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2018-10-05 16:29:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 55,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10312412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderlight/pseuds/murderlight
Summary: It's tough being a shinigami substitute in peacetime. With nothing to fight and Soul Society's doors closed to him, Ichigo struggles to go on with his life, sinking into routine and withdrawing from the world. Too bad Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez never got the memo.Between drinks, fighting and truly terrible music, Ichigo and Grimmjow discover that purpose isn't always where you'd expect to find it--and that two worlds might just hinge on them finally figuring each other out.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set post-Bleach, but also ignoring the absolute shit out of the epilogue.

 

 

Ichigo wasn’t sure who he wanted to kill more: Grimmjow, for being a colossal pain in his ass, Urahara, for giving the lunatic a gigai in the first place, or himself, for ever agreeing to the entire trash fire that had been their night so far. At least he had time to mull it over—the police lock-up smelled like antiseptic and faint urine, and Ichigo was pretty sure the constable on shift wasn’t coming back for them anytime soon.

Grimmjow had that effect on people.

In fact, he was having that effect on Ichigo right now.

Unfortunately for him they’d been shoved into the same cell, cuffed together because Grimmjow had kept trying to bite the officer with the key. Just another, different kind of low point, one of many that had occurred over the night. So very many.

Ichigo’s hand was jerked abruptly as Grimmjow raised his own to his mouth, sucking dried blood off his knuckles.

“That’s disgusting.”

A middle finger emerged from the clenched fist Grimmjow was cleaning. He was grinning around his knuckles. Ichigo rolled his eyes.

“Please contract tetanus and die.”

Grimmjow’s blue eyes went from smugly satisfied to appalled in point-five of a second. He spat sharply on the concrete floor.

“Can gigai do that?”

Ichigo tipped his head back, feeling his skull connect dully with the brick wall.

Definitely option three.

 

* * *

 

**[six hours earlier]**

Friday nights had been quiet at the Kurosaki household for the last few months. More than a few months, really. Karin was abroad, studying under a sports scholarship in America. Yuzu was more often than not helping Isshin in the clinic—where Ichigo should probably be, if he was completely honest. Being nineteen and torn in a hundred different directions had him standing completely still, working part-time as a kitchen hand in a local restaurant. After the last few years, Ichigo figured he was probably owed some of that teen life he’d almost missed out on.

It also meant he was incredibly bored. So when the heavy demanding knock of a full fist hit the front door, arrogant and obnoxious, Ichigo sat up straight and dropped the TV remote to the sofa with a soft thump. He was halfway to the door by the time he heard the pained hiss from the other side.

“The fuck,” a voice whispered hoarsely, obviously heavily injured. Ichigo grappled the door handle and yanked the thing open, locks tumbling haphazardly.

“Hey, what’s wrong? My old man’s not in the clin—” His voice died in his throat. Twice, he might have blinked. It was hard to tell.

Grimmjow stood on the doorstep in a halo of muted light and disturbed flying bugs, who apparently didn’t know whether to go for him or the light. Just standing there with absolutely no reiatsu, wearing—Ichigo squinted at what looked like black jeans, boots and a loosely tucked half-buttoned shirt—decidedly human clothes.  The jaw mask was gone, but the smear of green at the tilt of his eyes was still there. Grimmjow’s fist was clenched to his chest protectively, but his eyes were narrow and unapologetic. Ichigo blinked for maybe the third time.

“We’re closed.” He shut the door and bolted for the stairs, nearly skidding into a wall. Kon, Kon, where the fuck was Kon—

Grimmjow shoved the door open with a shouted curse and came barrelling into the house after him. Ichigo had the sudden betrayed lament that ex-espada weren’t at all like vampires and could, in fact, come through doors like gangly pissed-off deer, slamming into things and yelling fuck a lot.

Ichigo was on the stairs when Grimmjow’s hand grabbed his flailing heel and hooked in the strong cotton of his sock, hauling his leg back just enough that he caught the whole ankle in unfairly long-fingered hands and yanked him back down the staircase. Ichigo winced as his stomach bounced over the edge of each step like a washboard, getting friction-burn on his fingertips the entire way down.

“No,” he said, the moment Grimmjow flipped him like a pancake and caged him on all fours like an eager…whatever he was. “No, I’m not fighting you. I don’t care if you have cancer and this is your last earthly wish, Grimmjow: it’s not happening.” Limbs splayed like a starfish, fingers stinging, Ichigo didn’t even lift his head. He tried for an authoritative, resolute kind of frown. The sort he’d seen on people like Byakuya and Toshirou when they had to deal with unruly assholes. 

 

“I’m not here to fight,” Grimmjow said flatly, and sat back on his haunches. Also, kinda Ichigo’s thighs. “Have you seen me, Kurosaki? I’m a fuckin’ walking marshmallow. A five year-old punched me in the dick on the way here. I nearly threw up in the alley.” He raised his fist and Ichigo tensed, but it was just to show off the graze on his knuckles.

“Did you hit a kid?” Ichigo stared, aghast. He barely batted away the hard swat at his head in time.

“Are you retarded? I got this knocking on your piece of shit door!” Swinging off Ichigo’s legs, Grimmjow sprawled heavily on the floor beside him, staring at the ceiling morosely. Knuckles knocked against Ichigo’s elbow, making him wince again. “I’m wearing a gigai, you shitful shinigami. I want to record my last will and testament before I go kill myself for agreeing to this torture chamber.”

“I’m not a priest,” Ichigo said sourly. “And you’re sure as hell not going into the light.”

“Fuck off and listen to my confession.” Grimmjow cleared his throat meaningfully. He took a deep, sober and steadying breath. “When I made sixth espada, I drank enough sake to kill Yammy’s entire ancestry and pissed everywhere in Ulquiorra’s closet. Just…all over his neatly folded stacks of clothes. We’re talking yellow the whole way through. I was a fuckin’ racehorse that night.”

Pushing himself up on his elbows, Ichigo shot Grimmjow a glare. “Like hell you’re sorry about that.”

“I got the room wrong.”

“Then who—”

“I pissed in my own room,” Grimmjow groaned, and covered his face with his hands. “My new room.”

Absorbing the short tale, listening to Grimmjow swear and lament his past deeds beside him, Ichigo stared up at the shadowed ceiling and wondered if this was the rest of his life, laid out in ten minutes of life-threatening escape and then horrible confessional for an easily-bruised arrancar who routinely told him in graphic detail just how he pictured killing Ichigo. It always involved a lot of turkey carving metaphors. Who the hell was eating turkey in Hueco Mundo, anyway?

It probably didn’t matter, just like it didn’t matter why Grimmjow had squeezed himself into a gigai after months of silence, laying low in Urahara’s underground bunker to sulk and hack things to pieces. Ichigo had known about it peripherally, in the sense that someone had told him, probably. It was hard to keep track of who said what when you were trying to bury your head in the sand and forget the whole shinigami thing. He might still have his powers and skills, but there was nothing out there anymore that people like Rukia and Renji weren’t able to handle.

He’d only ever been a substitute, after all.

Maybe he was as shitty at handling it as Grimmjow was. Two forcibly retired enemies, doing things they never thought they would.

Such, Ichigo thought, as being splayed on the floor of his house, where Isshin was inevitably going to find them both and probably try to tell the bastard he could move into his wardrobe. Given his recent story, like hell that was ever happening.

“Is that your only confession?” Ichigo caught himself asking, turning his head to eye the darkened profile of his self-sworn enemy.

“Yeah, why? What kind of sad asshole has more than one?”

Ichigo scowled. After another beat, he sat up, grabbing a lean wrist with his other hand.

“Come on, we’re going out.”

Grimmjow sat up somewhat obediently, but sagged forward like a limp flower as he stared at his booted feet.

“Where? I ain’t fighting you, Kurosaki. I’m disabled.” 

Grabbing his coat from the rack, Ichigo threw it on with a whirl of black fabric. The hood settled on his head, loose and concealing. He grinned through it at Grimmjow, who was blinking back owlishly. The angle of his jaw was sharper without the broken mask.

“You mean you have a handicap, dickhead. And we’re going to fit you for a beer coat.”

“A what—”

“We’re getting a drink. Trust me, you’ll hurt less afterwards.”

The road to hell might be paved with a lot of Ichigo’s personal good intentions, but he figured he could stand it if anything went wrong. He’d been there before, after all.

 

* * *

 

If pressed, Ichigo couldn’t say for sure what sent him out onto the streets that night, other than getting Grimmjow, sixth espada of Aizen’s personally-picked arrancar out of his family home. He’d been actively reclusive for nearly the last year, as everyone started going on with their lives. The battles they’d all gone through had dried up, and while Ichigo couldn’t be even a little sorry about that, there was something scratching against the drywall of his mind, urging him to move a little. Fight a little. With that much out of the question and Grimmjow looking traumatised enough by his ultra-sensitive gigai that he’d even seek him out, a bar seemed like the next best idea. Ichigo wasn’t of legal age to drink yet, but he knew he could pass for twenty and there weren’t many places in Karakura that gave a shit about his ID, far preferring the glint in his eye as he ordered up.

That was how they ended up in one of the seedier establishments local to the prefecture: a dark, dimly-lit thing with cracked vinyl barstools and purposely sooted windows tucked beside an alleyway that was perpetually slick with water and abandoned cars. A place people didn’t really go unless they wanted cheap alcohol and cheap company. It didn’t bother Ichigo, being what he was, and despite Grimmjow being a little delicate in his gigai his expression sharpened with interest, ears almost pricking up as he breathed stale smoke and listened to the faint drawl of the jukebox suffering in the corner.

“This place is a shithole,” Grimmjow said approvingly. The spread of his shoulders already seemed wider. “I want a cheap beer in a dirty glass. Give me money for the music over there.”

Fishing out a handful of coins from his pocket, Ichigo shoved it into the upturned and waiting palm, ignoring the sharp-toothed grin it earned him as he turned for the bar. The music was so dim he could probably pick German pop and it wouldn’t matter.

“Two?” the barman grunted as he approached. He was a large, pot-bellied guy with a comb-over and beady eyes. “House picks?”

“House can pick for me.” Ichigo thumbed in Grimmjow’s direction. “He wants a dirty beer.”

Wandering back sometime later, Grimmjow had his hands stuffed into his pockets and a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. Privately, Ichigo could admit the gigai was dressed pretty closely to a style that suited a cocky bastard like Grimmjow. He had the first three buttons at his collar undone, fanning open until the wedge of his throat and upper chest were visible. No scars, of course—the gigai showed nothing but perfectly smooth skin. Ichigo figured the wide, hooked scar that bisected his chest would make him too conspicuous, but the blue hair kind of took care of that already. It might not even be there anymore, in his true form. Healing was always progressing, and if Urahara was looking after Grimmjow at the shop, maybe he had looked after other things too.

“Eyes up here,” Grimmjow said, a laugh sounding caught in the back of his throat. His fingers were flicking upward from his chest. “You never seen a shirt before?”

“Not you in one,” Ichigo snorted, sliding money across the laminate of the bar. He barely paid attention to the glasses thumped in front of them. Not until he smelled the cloying sweetness of chambord, anyway. “What the hell is this?” The bartender was already ambling down the other end of the bar, wiping down the surfaces, leaving Ichigo with…well, it did smell good. Some pinkish concoction in a cocktail glass with a hulled strawberry slid over the lip of the martini glass. At least, that’s what Ichigo thought it was. It smelled like raspberry and pineapple.

Grimmjow suddenly eyed his beer like it was somehow lacking. Behind them both, the faint strains of 'Every Breath You Take' by The Police began crooning over the jukebox’s aged speakers. Ichigo rolled his eyes and took a gulp of his drink, pointedly not looking as Grimmjow slid onto the barstool beside him with a self-satisfied sigh.

“Do you even know these songs?”

“Urahara has a thing,” Grimmjow swayed his hand meaningfully, “for old karaoke music. Never heard the lyrics outside his warbling, though.” Taking a deep swig of the beer in front of him, following Ichigo’s lead, neither of them bothered to turn around as the real evening crowd began to fill the bar in slow droves. A few complained about the backlog of music Grimmjow had queued up, some ten songs by the sounds of the rumpled occupants in the back booth.

They sat for long minutes, sipping drinks and eyeing each other when it seemed prudent.

“What,” Ichigo asked finally, tongue skimming his lip for the last sheen of his drink. The sharp sting of alcohol and red fruit sat happily in the back of his mouth. “You keep doing that face.” Another bank note to the barman, another repeat of their drinks. Grimmjow set his jaw and didn’t reply, just tossed his head back to drain his beer. Ichigo watched the lean curve of his throat bob on a long swallow. The burp was less interesting, but even he had to give Grimmjow points for volume.

“What face, huh? The face of me bein’ locked down like this, watching you just doing it on purpose? Huh?” Leaning across, Grimmjow nearly put them nose-to-nose. “You’re getting soft, Kurosaki Ichigo. Gonna get fat, like this.” A hand planted itself roughly against Ichigo’s stomach, cold and spidery between the folds of his coat, over his t-shirt. There was nothing to grab there and they both knew it, but maybe that wasn’t the point. Ichigo realised with a start that he hadn’t even tried to stop what could have been an attack.

“Get off me,” Ichigo grumbled, shoving the hand away. “This is my choice, just like it was your choice to wear a gigai that left you with the attack power of a wet kitten.” His eyes met angry blue. “Which you haven’t explained yet, by the way.”

A snort. “Like you don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“The kidou bindings, all around your fuckin’ house and where you work. All down the street you walk home on, even to the supermarket.” Grimmjow looked like he wanted to spit. “Can’t touch you—someone wants you locked up tight as a drum. Safe as houses.” Another hard draught on his beer, but this time Grimmjow looked like he wanted to stab something. Ichigo just watched him intently.

Kidou on his house? Work? His way home? It would explain why he hadn’t even smelled a hint of spiritual activity—maybe even explained why he hadn’t bothered to look further into any he’d sensed. There was, what, dampeners?

Had Grimmjow willingly entered a gigai just to get through them?

Bullshit, Ichigo thought, eagerly grabbing his fresh drink, drawing out the strawberry from the glass rim. It was snatched from his fingers before he could eat it, leaving nothing but red syrup on his fingers. Grimmjow chewed happily, sharp teeth still ferociously inhuman. Some things even gigai couldn’t mask.

“Guess I got your cherry, Kurosaki.”

“That’s a strawberry.”

“Even better, yeah? _Ichigo_?”

“Oh, I’ve never heard that one before.” Ichigo tipped the glass to his lips and swallowed, sliding his eyes to the interested gaze fixed on the liquid. “What, you want some? It’s actually pretty good.”

Grimmjow was chewing his lip—really, actually kind of chewing—when the next song kicked in. Cher’s ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ started over the muffled jukebox speakers. Behind them, a few people whooped and shuffled in tandem. Someone groaned loudly. Ichigo sagged, trying to imagine Urahara singing terribly to it in karaoke. It didn’t go down well. He was still trying to come to grips with it when long fingers unpicked his grip from the stem of his glass and took it from him, and Grimmjow took a cautious sip of the sweet redness in the glass. It had more bite than the beer, that was sure. Blue eyebrows shot up, and Ichigo watched as the rest of it slid down his throat in a long wash of stolen alcohol.

The glass was thumped down in front of him, empty. Grimmjow blew out a breath that might as well have been dragonfire, it smelled that flammable. Across from them the bartender hovered once again, his damp cloth slung over his arm. What a stereotype. There was probably a shotgun strapped under the counter, too. Was the place modelled after a saloon? Ichigo hadn’t seen enough westerns to be really sure. Another thousand yen flew across the bar. Ichigo didn’t really care by that point; he’d been pointlessly saving his cash for months, knowing he had no goals for it. Study? Clothes? An apartment one day? None of it mattered really, while he still felt the twitch of violence between his shoulders. The call to draw his blade.

The bartender kept serving, and Ichigo kept paying until the room felt a little blurry and soft around the edges. At his left, Grimmjow looked almost soft, too.

“I’m not getting fat,” Ichigo said expansively, tilting his head to frown at Grimmjow. “Or if I am, aren’t you as well?”

“I still train in the bunker,” Grimmjow said, shaking his head. “You never come. I’m sittin’ about fighting imaginary shit and waiting, while you’re out here in the stinking suburbs pretending nothing ever happened. That you’re ordinary. You know how much I want to kill you for that?”

“You always want to kill me,” Ichigo said, somewhat fairly. He took another gulp of his drink, this one sharper than the rest. Grimmjow snorted loudly.

“You’re sitting in this shithole, with actual vermin and all the human trash this area can spit up, tryin’a tell me you’re enjoying life? Who the fuck are you now? You’re a deadbeat, Kurosaki.”

“Fuck you, Grimmjow,” Ichigo snarled. “Why don’t you go back to Hueco Mundo then? No one wants or needs you here. ‘Specially no deadbeat ex-shinigami. You came to me _,_ you lonely asshole.”

The hand that slammed into Ichigo’s throat and took him to the floor was human-strength, and weak by even that measure. It still caught Ichigo by enough surprise that his shoulders hit the sticky floor before he could react. Getting soft. Hovering over him, Grimmjow’s face was thin with rage, his eyes glittering.

“If you want to squirm your way to a slow death, you shitty excuse for an enemy, I’ll kill you right here.”

Ichigo’s response was to haul back as best he could, and punch Grimmjow in the ear. He snarled in pain, lurching, but he didn’t let go. Tenacious bastard, Ichigo thought, watching the room swim around them both. Even in that form, tenacious. The hand on his throat was sweating, slipping in it as he squeezed the damp column of Ichigo’s throat.

“Get off me,” he rasped, planting his palm on Grimmjow’s chest in warning. His fingers were pressed into the splay of flesh left by the open collar of his shirt. “Unless you want to die.”

“I don’t want to die, you retard,” Grimmjow snarled in his face, “I want you to give a shit and fight me. Or we might as well both fuckin’ lay down and gut ourselves, and end the whole damn thing.”

It occurred to Ichigo, between the swirling room and the furious blue of Grimmjow’s eyes, that maybe his old rival had been waiting around for him to pull his head out of his ass the entire time. He couldn’t think of any other reason an ex-espada might want to hang around Karakura, wait over a year for activity and then finally don a de-powered gigai just to shake sense into him in the flesh.

It was…actually pretty dedicated of him. Which still made a horrible kind of sense. In trying to shake him up for a fight, Grimmjow had actually woken him up to the world around him. For a few pink drinks and some shitty old music.

“All right,” Ichigo said hoarsely, drawing his hand back to slap at the hand holding his throat. “All right.”

“All right?” Grimmjow asked, releasing his throat to hold his shoulders down to the floor. His expression was a little drunk, but mostly furious and miserable. “’Cause I’m going, if not.” He didn’t have to specify where he meant by going.

“No. Stay.” Ichigo blinked hard. Grimmjow’s breath smelled like burning candy. “But also get off me.”

Despite being de-powered like he was, Grimmjow still seemed to have more than enough strength to pull Ichigo back up to his feet—more than enough for an arrancar, really, which begged all kinds of questions about the nature of Urahara’s special gigai, and what it could do—and set him straight when he swayed with the movement, even though it meant Ichigo bracing his cheek on a shoulder that smelled like generic soap and ambient cigarette smoke. For a moment that contact was the only solid point in the room. Hands burned like brands at his upper arms.

“Fags,” someone faux-coughed behind Ichigo. A few scattering laughs at the tables behind them both. Last check, there had only been five people back there.

“Trash,” Grimmjow spat back.

Reiatsu swelled under Ichigo’s alcohol-dulled grip. But didn’t the gigai have conditions—

Didn’t it? Ichigo wondered as Grimmjow shoved him hard into the side of the bar and leapt at the occupants of the far corner, where the laughter had been loudest. Someone went flying past Ichigo’s head and slid behind the bar before he had enough mental faculty to wonder if he should do something.

Another guy went sailing through the air. At Ichigo’s right, the barman started reaching under the bar for something. Ichigo spread his hands.

“I’ve got this,” Ichigo promised, and maybe he looked like he really did, because the guy stopped reaching.

Ichigo threw himself into the fray.

If nothing else, it was a fight.

 

* * *

 

**[present]**

“Did you come out just to give me a pep talk?” Ichigo asked eventually, wondering why he was even bothering. The concrete wall at his back was cold and the steel cot under his ass was cold, and he was sobering up at an alarming rate. What did motive even matter anymore?

At his side, Grimmjow shifted. He’d given up on cleaning his fist with his tongue, instead opting to pick at any scraped skin with his fingertips. It was still gross, but at least Ichigo didn’t have to watch him obscenely sucking on things. The strawberry had been bad enough. Did he have some kind of oral fixation?

“I just wanted to see if you were still alive,” Grimmjow said eventually, head tilted down to his work. “Turns out you weren’t.”

“Aren’t you just a saint.” The words came out with more bite than Ichigo intended. “Thanks.”

A long, fraught silence followed. Ichigo shuffled, feeling the cuff clink on his wrist. Grimmjow didn’t react. Ichigo raised his eyes to the yellowing fluorescent light, puttering softly as it decided whether to keep going or simply flit out. It flickered on.

“…really. Thanks, Grimmjow.”

The smile he got in return was all predatory teeth: sharp with savage promise.

“I’ll believe that when I kick your ass in the bunker. Next week.” He paused. “Get the recipe for that strawberry drink, would you? I’m gonna need it when Urahara starts playing that 'Cotton Eye Joe' shit downstairs.”

Ichigo rubbed his palms over his face and thought about laying low, keeping quiet, and forgetting about being a shinigami altogether.

 _All right?_ _’Cause I’m going, if not._

“Yeah, deal.”


	2. Chapter 2

Ichigo would never admit it, but he had a small case of nerves on his way down to Urahara’s shop.

Not because he was going to see Grimmjow, who despite being a self-centred dick with a violent streak a mile wide wasn’t actually terrible company in a bar setting. Not even because Ichigo was going to actively try to beat the shit out of Grimmjow, who had apparently been in a Rocky-style training montage since they last parted ways. No, Ichigo’s nerves purely revolved around the knowledge that for the second time in almost a year, he was breaking his routine.

Dumb thought, Ichigo told himself, walking past a small playground. Kids were kicking a ball around in the shade. Summer had turned the air thick with a humid heat, and the sunshine was punishing. There was a new piece of play equipment down the far end, and a slightly-wilted flower bed he didn’t remember seeing before. Bothered, Ichigo wondered when he’d gotten so stuck in a rut that Urahara had only needed to set eight kidou points to effectively seal him off from the world, spiritually speaking. He hadn’t been imprisoned, or subjugated, or had any of his power removed. The daily routine of home, work, supermarket, home had been established by himself alone.

Until Grimmjow came along, anyway, in a gigai so restricted even a human had been able to black his eye in a bar fight. The lengths he’d gone to still surprised Ichigo, but when you were an arrancar who lived for a fight maybe that was just dressing for the occasion.

They hadn’t seen each other since the bar brawl and their short stay in the local station’s drunk tank, and in that entire week Ichigo had been trying to puzzle the night out. Part of him strongly suspected that Grimmjow had finally let his boredom get to him, which had fuelled the visit. But the rest had been on Ichigo, pure and simple. Maybe Grimmjow’s special brand of impulsive madness was infectious. Going to a seedy bar with a guy who tried to kill him—and still very much wanted to, from what Ichigo could tell—without thinking twice about it was the complete opposite of everything he’d thought he wanted after Soul Society took their claws out of him.

Still, Ichigo admitted to himself, being summarily dismissed from shinigami duties because they’d achieved peace wasn’t exactly the same as being fired. The afro guy could look after any hollows in the area. No need for the substitute to step in. Maybe some part of him still resented being dropped like a hot rock, but it was hard to argue. Ichigo wasn’t enough of a jerk to wish there was trouble about just so he could stay relevant.

Walking around the edge of the block, Urahara Shop slid into view: a squat two storey building with a dirt driveway and wood panelling along the windows and sliding doors. The old grey van was parked beside it, cobwebs of disuse shrouding the side mirrors and windscreen wipers. The whole place just looked so nondescript even Ichigo partly wanted to keep walking. He chalked that one up to minor dissuasion shields, probably to keep random people from prying.

“Oh, Ichigo!” Tessai called in greeting as Ichigo walked through the sliding door. The hulking man was sweeping the floor, apron tied immaculately in place. His moustache twitched upward in a smile. “You haven’t been around this way in some time. Jinta and Ururu have missed you.”

“Don’t lie to me, Tessai,” Ichigo replied lightly, feeling a little awkward. Where were the others? “Jinta would step over my warm corpse for six hundred yen. Is Urahara around?”

“Not if he can help it these days. Our newest employee has been demanding alterations to his gigai with increasing ferocity.”

“Alterations?”

“He wants something more fearsome than his current fleshbag of wet kittens, I believe was the line he used.”

A memory of surging reiatsu at the bar that night flickered in the back of Ichigo’s mind, but it was probably a question for Urahara when he eventually came out of hiding. With a final greeting and a promise to buy a bag of candy for Yuzu on the way out, Ichigo headed for the bunker hatch in the back room.

He’d barely reached for the handle when it slammed open, pouring heartfelt and deafening strains of what Ichigo was pretty sure was 'Total Eclipse of the Heart.' A wild blue head popped up and swivelled around like a periscope until narrowed eyes landed on him.

“Fuckin’ Kurosaki Ichigo,” Grimmjow said with great satisfaction, grinning like a piranha. His hair was sticking up in sweaty strands, a long bead of moisture rolling down his temple. His shoulders were bare and streaked with dirt. “Get your ass down here so I can jam my boot straight up it. Before that—” he reached down and grabbed something inside the bunker, “get maid cosplay to take these away, would ya?” He threw two exhausted lumps onto the floor of the back room.

“Oooh,” Jinta moaned, attempting to crawl to freedom. Ururu was in no better shape, wiping a streak of fatigue drool from the corner of her mouth. Her hair was straggling across her face, but Ichigo could tell she wasn’t bruised or broken. Jinta on the other hand had a nice split in his lip. “Forget it, we can manage,” the kid wheezed. Raking damp crimson hair off his face, Jinta attempted to look like he was imparting a dying wish. “But fuck him up, Ichigo. With interest.”

“Eat shit,” Grimmjow replied, giving the boy a healthy middle finger before he slid back down the ladder bare-handed.

Ichigo pulled out his combat pass and pressed it against his chest, ejecting his soul fast enough that he could catch his own body before it went face-down on the tatami. Normally he would have brought Kon, but somehow he wasn’t exactly confident he wouldn’t be heckled to hell and back if Grimmjow wiped the floor with him. He looked at the puddle of teenager on the floor at his feet.

“Were you two target practice for him?”

Ururu pushed herself up on twig-like arms and gave him a hunted look.

“Endurance training. Kisuke says we could always improve fight length when it comes to tough opponents. Grimmjow helps out.” She flopped over onto her back; a starfish in dirty activewear. “I would like to die.” Beside her, Jinta made a noise of agreement.

Ichigo digested this new information as he put his body in the corner, propping it up against the wall. Training Ururu and Jinta wouldn’t really be satisfying for Grimmjow, would it? Was it to earn his room and board? Urahara didn’t exactly need the cash.

He was still thinking about it when he jumped down the hatch hole, almost clipping Zangestu on the edge. The fall was long, but it gave him a few seconds to take in the familiar surroundings. Dirt and rock and artificial blue sky, a breeze that was manufactured from some unseen vents and…booming power ballads. Again.

“I am not fighting you to music,” Ichigo called over the swelling strains of Bonnie Tyler. “Turn it off!”

Grimmjow just shook his head. “I can’t figure out where this shit’s coming from,” he yelled back, scraping dirt off his skin with a rough towel. This time he was wearing impractical black jeans and flat boots, his hollow hole on proud display. “Urahara rigged something up after I told him he was probably one of those animal fuckers.”

“Animal fuckers?” Ichigo sounded out slowly, loudly, hoping he was wrong.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure he’s not a kid fucker. Those two would rip the dick off a charging lion if it looked at them crosswise. It’s gotta be the animals he’s into. Think about it: his best friend is a sexy cat. He’s into pussy, Kurosaki, and not in the socially acceptable way.”

Ichigo wanted to hang his head and crawl away like Jinta. Two minutes in and he’d heard things. Things he’d pictured.

“I thought you wanted to beat me to a pulp, not send me to a mental institution.”

“I’m good with both.” Snapping the towel away to hang on a nearby boulder, Grimmjow stretched out his arms and loudly cracked about twelve knuckles in a dominant display. It was ruined by _Janie’s Got a Gun_ bursting over the unseen speakers. “Are we doing this, or you wanna go running back home to do laundry? Do some cross-stitch?”

“Hey, that’s a precision art,” Ichigo protested, then sidestepped as a blue-black blur came flying toward him. He caught a single fist with his hand and stopped it hard. “I have a condition: if we do this, we do it hand to hand. No cero, no swords, no kidou. I’m not destroying half the town from below.”

“You don’t even know any kidou.”

“Shu—that’s not the point.”

“So you don’t? Fuck, Kurosaki.”

“Just agree to my terms. I’m not here to fight to the death.”

Grimmjow stared at him hard, lip curling and eyes slitted to narrow splinters of blue. Measuring, calculating, testing the resolve of his statement for fear or weakness. Ichigo didn’t have any, but he also sure as hell didn’t want blood on his hands. Just as equally, he didn’t want Inoue to have to come out and patch him up again. He’d put that girl through more than enough. Finally, Grimmjow blinked and pulled his fist out of Ichigo’s grasp, squaring his shoulders. His long breath was remarkably calm.

“If you wanted a warm-up, you should’ve fought the kids.”

Ichigo’s world washed blue and white with reiatsu, and he threw himself backward with an internal sigh. Zangetsu’s swords were drawn in a rush as Grimmjow flew at him like a streaking comet of light and fury, all fists and claws and blade, teeth shining on a wild snarl.

It figured the asshole wouldn’t listen.

It also figured Ichigo would almost kill himself before ever admitting defeat.

* * *

 ‘ _But I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more…_ ’

Ichigo blinked blood out of his left eye and stared up at the painted sky that was raining terrible music onto him. His entire body felt like it had been shoved through a mincer. The rocky ground was digging into all his worst injuries and a piece of old shale was lodged almost completely in his crack. His recently pristine shihakushou was shredded into ribbons of black and white. Zangestu was...somewhere.

“Did you die?" Ichigo croaked to the sky, not bothering to move his head.

Something scraped against the rocks to his left.

“I could go two more rounds, easy,” Grimmjow said, sounding like he absolutely did die.

“Me too.”

They breathed in silence, or as close to silence as they could get when their throats were whining laboured breath like old engines. Ichigo wanted to drink water until it sloshed in his stomach like a canteen, but all he had was dirt, sweat and blood. He’d have to be more prepared next time.

Next time.

“We should alternate weeks,” Ichigo caught himself saying. “The bar one Friday, fighting down here the next.”

Silence. Breathing continued in lieu of a reply for long moments.

Had that been too friendly? Why was he being friendly, anyway? Ichigo didn’t have to give Grimmjow the time of day just because he wanted it. There were plenty of shinigami who could descend and take care of him if Grimmjow decided to go back to his old ways—it wasn’t on Ichigo to keep him happy or anything. He should just take it back. They had the fight Grimmjow wanted, it didn’t have to be anything—

“Bar on Wednesday, fight on Friday. That’s two days to kill a gigai hangover, and a week between ass-kickings.”

“Your ass, you mean,” Ichigo said, trying to roll onto his side like a turtle. He ended up cheek-down in the dirt, blinking at dirty fingernails an inch away from his nose. One was pointing right at him. Blinking to focus, Ichigo stared right up the barrel of Grimmjow’s arm to a tipped head and a bloody-toothed grin.

“Your ass.”

“I’m not paying for all the drinks next time. Your shout.”

“You think I get paid to live in this shithole? Sandals just keeps me here so I can babysit while he fucks his cat.”

“Can you stop that?” Ichigo groaned, mashing his entire face into the dirt. “You’ve seen Yoruichi. She’s not a real cat.”

“Smells like a cat to me,” Grimmjow said darkly. “Talks like an old man though. Mixed signals, Kurosaki. Mixed signals.”

“Everyone here is weird,” Ichigo said fatalistically. “One time, I woke up in the shop with Tessai laying on top of me, staring about three inches away from my face. Jinta and Ururu once tried to drool in my mouth while I was dying of thirst down here. Yoruichi has flashed me more times than I can count, and Urahara sealed me off from the spirit world to keep me out of everyone’s business.”

“That wasn’t him.”

Ichigo’s eyes snapped open. “Bullshit.”

“Nah,” Grimmjow said dismissively. “Why the fuck would he care? It’s not like anything’s been going on around here. Plus I think he’s a sad bastard since everyone stopped visiting. Why else would he give me a room, huh? To lure you out. Even gave me a special gigai, free of charge, to get in under the barrier undetected.”

“He told you that?” Ichigo shifted himself up on his stomach, braced by his elbows. Grimmjow’s face was painted in blood, but there was no mistaking the tightness around his eyes. He was pissed off.

“I don’t need telling; I worked under Aizen long enough to know when I’m being played. But what the hell, right? It dragged you out.”

“Right,” Ichigo repeated faintly. His mind was racing, but only in one direction. There weren’t too many kidou masters out there who would rig something so neatly, and two of them were under the very same roof. The other one…well, the other one lived under Ichigo’s. His old man didn’t usually try to manage him, though.

It was hard work, but Ichigo managed to shove himself to his feet after another minute’s rest. He had to tie the flapping shreds of his clothing into place for dignity’s sake, and to give his blades a secure place at his waist. Despite being completely filthy, stripped half naked and probably the sorest he’d been inside of the last eighteen months, he was feeling pretty good. Still rusty, but able to hold his own. Unless Grimmjow had been going easy on him, but all signs pointed to hell no on that front. Grimmjow didn’t go easy on anyone. Judging by the stagger as he stood up, that statement definitely included himself.

“You know it’s Tuesday, right?” Ichigo said as they stiff-legged their way to the ladder, slapping each other’s grimy hands away when one tried to greedily lean on the other. “That means bar tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, it does. And more bunker time on Friday.”

“Please don’t call it bunker time.”

They got to the base of the ladder after what felt like a lifetime, and stared up at the seemingly endless upward trail of metal rungs. The sound Ichigo made wasn’t quite a whimper, but it sure wasn’t anything brave or courageous. Grimmjow just said a word that Ichigo hadn’t heard outside of Eleventh Division and reached out for the first rung.

Waiting until Grimmjow was three rungs higher than him, Ichigo began climbing with muscles that had turned to mush and legs that shook a little with tension. It was only a ladder, he told himself. He’d be okay once he got back into his body and slept it off. Probably.

“Did you die?” Grimmjow grunted down at him.

“Not yet,” Ichigo panted.

“You sound like you’re about— _fuck_ —”

Ichigo looked up in time to see a missed step, a flailing arm, and Grimmjow coming back down on top of him like a half-naked bag of cement. He threw up both arms to ward off the worst of the impact, and gave himself over to a hard landing back in the dirt.

_Shoomp._

They hit hard, half the wind knocked out of Ichigo and a swearing dead weight on top of him, pissing and moaning about his ankle. Vaguely, Ichigo wondered what that noise had been, right until he tried to move his arms.

“Oh my god.”

“The fuck are you—the fuck did you do?” Grimmjow said in horror, staring between them at Ichigo’s bicep. Because he couldn’t see the rest of the arm, given that it was lodged inside his hollow hole, far past the elbow. It shot out the back of him like an obscene tail to Ichigo’s eyes, tingling with the reduced flow of blood. “Get outta me, Kurosaki.” Shoving down on Ichigo’s chest, Grimmjow tried to push himself upward to dislodge the arm.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Ichigo yelled as he felt his shoulder begin to dislocate with the wrench on his arm. “Ow, it’s gonna come off! Stop moving!”

“Oh it’s gonna come off,” Grimmjow growled, shoving again. “Even if I have to cut it at the joint. You’re stuck in my hole. Let that sink in for a second.”

“I think it’s already sunk in as far as it can,” Ichigo said mildly, gripping his shoulder with his free hand. “Physically speaking.”

Grimmjow stared at him in hard silence for a moment. Braced over Ichigo in an awkward push-up, tethered by almost his entire arm, at the very least Ichigo expected to be clawed and mauled. Wild things caught in traps usually did that, didn’t they?

“Did you just make a joke about this?”

Ichigo blinked. “Kind of?”

“You’re a sick bastard, Kurosaki.” Grimmjow nodded to himself. “I like it. C’mon, let’s crab formation our way back up this ladder. I’ll be the arms, you do the legs, and when we get to the top we pretend this shit never happened and we never speak of it again.”

“Especially not to Urahara,” Ichigo swore.

“Especially not cat-fucker,” Grimmjow agreed.

“Oh, for—”

Grimmjow was still snorting to himself by the time they reached the bunker’s hatch.


	3. Chapter 3

Ichigo didn’t usually linger in the house for breakfast, far preferring to slam a glass of juice and take a piece of toast while he vigilantly avoided his old man’s attempts to assassinate him. Sitting at the kitchen table was a whole lot like painting a target on his back. But in the spirit of breaking old habits, Ichigo was seated for once, watching his sister master the kitchen with his cheek braced on his fist.

Even though Karin had been gone almost six months already, Yuzu still bustled around the kitchen making breakfast like she was cooking for four, arms flashing about adjusting heat and buttering toast while things sizzled and spat in the pan on the stove. It was a dreary grey morning outside, and the watery light coming in the windows looked lifeless compared to the golden, warmth-soaked kitchen and all its delicious scents. The buttery, savoury aroma of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, sausages and fried potato hit Ichigo. Despite his minimal breakfast habits his mouth started to water.

“What’s with the spread?” Ichigo asked as Yuzu thumped the plate down in front of him triumphantly, heavy with what looked like three of everything she’d been cooking. “What happened to rice and vegetables?”

“Dad’s in the clinic,” she shrugged, wiping her hands on her apron. “I don’t have to watch his cholesterol this morning. Besides, I want to be sure I’ve got this kind of breakfast perfected before Karin comes back for the holidays. Make sure you try everything! If you just eat the bread I’m telling Dad you have a girlfriend.”

Isshin’s one great hope for Ichigo was that he’d find some sweet girl like Rukia to settle down with. Putting aside the fact that Ichigo didn’t have the energy to explain at length why Rukia was a crafty fraud, when it came to heartfelt declarations of love for his kids and his hopes for their futures…the old man could get pretty intense. If Yuzu made good on her threat he’d never hear the end of it.

Instead of responding, Ichigo speared a sausage and began taking dedicated bites from one end. Yuzu’s nose wrinkled, but she relaxed and returned to the sink to tidy up. Ichigo set about demolishing his breakfast, somehow hungrier with each bite. When was the last time he had a proper meal?

“Always knew you liked the sausage, Kurosaki.”

Ichigo nearly dropped his utensils. Grimmjow was leaning on the doorframe to the entry like he’d been standing there all along, arms crossed and shoulder planted in a casual pose. It would have been kind of cool, if he didn’t have about four Chappy band-aids on his forearms where his sleeves were rolled back. He was baring his teeth in that razor smile he favoured.

Ichigo waved his half-eaten sausage in Grimmjow’s direction. “I want to make a dick joke, believe me, but I’m too hungry to give a shit right now. Why are you even here?” Not waiting for a response, he loaded another mouthful home. Eggs and potato and just a tiny corner of crunchy buttered toast. Oh, man.

“Lab coat downstairs said I should just go straight up. You think he knows I tried to kill you a few times, or nah?” Grimmjow finally squinted at Yuzu, who was inching for her ladle. “Hey, midget. You cook all this?”

“Yes,” she peeped, snatching her hand away behind her back. “I’ll feed you if you promise not to fight my brother. He needs calories today, not bruises.”

“Deal. Give me everything you’ve got.”

That was how Ichigo ended up eating breakfast with a madman—one who seemed to have a real thing for sausage himself, from the way he was shovelling them down his neck. Maybe his modded gigai needed food like fuel?

Waiting for Grimmjow to eat enough to slow down and answer his question was taking a really long time. In the few moments it took Ichigo to eat a couple of pieces of crispy bacon and slug his juice, Grimmjow had polished off a third of his plate. Distracted from his own meal, Ichigo watched in growing fascination as his sudden houseguest went clockwise around the plate, annihilating each portion of food in its entirety before moving onto the next.

“You don’t put all the food together for one bite?”

Grimmjow paused in his systematic destruction to level Ichigo a disturbed stare.

“I’m not an animal, Kurosaki.” And back to eating.

Suitably schooled, Ichigo focused on his own food after that. He did register Yuzu piling Grimmjow’s plate high with seconds though, her face slowly dawning luminescent with joy as she watched him eat absolutely everything she’d cooked. That didn’t bode well, he realised. Eats well? Dad let him in upstairs through the clinic?

The spare room upstairs?

“Nope,” Ichigo said. “You are not living here. Give me that.” He reached out to take the plate away.

Grimmjow jammed the fork into the back of his hand. Four little blood-filled dots remained after he yanked it out, licked the tines and went back to eating like nothing happened. Ichigo dabbed a paper napkin against it in mild horror. It wasn’t deep, but—oh, did he need a tetanus shot now?

“I don’t want to live here, dipshit. I want to eat all your food and see that haunted stuffed dog Urahara says you have.”

“It’s a lion,” Yuzu said helpfully over her shoulder, scrubbing away at a sudsy pan.

“Whatever, short-stack.” Grimmjow hesitated a moment. “Do you have pancakes? I like those.”

Yuzu brightened. “Have you ever tried them with whipped maple butter? And bacon bits? I wanted to try the recipe, but Ichigo won’t eat it. He says it’s unholy.”

“I’d eat it,” came the matter-of-fact reply. Delighted, Yuzu beamed her biggest smile, the one usually reserved for Ichigo when he brought her back candy from Urahara’s store. Grimmjow just eyed her with some wariness, probably not used to all that happiness being radiated at him, but finally settled and gave a curt nod.

“You’re gonna get fat,” Ichigo muttered, peering under the napkin critically. Something about Grimmjow and Yuzu talking like people was freaking him out. Yuzu did know the great big family secret by now, but she had no idea who or what her new breakfast buddy was. Still, there was no doubt that Grimmjow meant her no harm, even if he really wanted to. Not in that body.

Tessai had explained the gigai a few weeks ago, in between shoving butter and canola oil into Grimmjow’s hollow hole to free up Ichigo’s arm. The gigai rendered him useless if he tried to attack certain types of people, such as children, the elderly, and non-combatants in general. He just went all floppy and his reiryoku evaporated like steam. But he could defend himself and others in it—it would even give him a little extra to work with. It was a pretty short leash for someone like Grimmjow, but given he needed it to get into Ichigo’s house, he just had to work with it.

“Here.” A strip of waxed paper was slid across the table to him, crumpled and warm from Grimmjow’s pocket. A children’s band-aid, printed with Chappy the rabbit. Fucking Chappy. Ichigo unwrapped it with ill grace and slapped it over the tiny wounds, figuring he’d sneak some antiseptic later. He stared down at the smiling white bastard now decorating his hand.

Rukia would like it.

Startled by the unbidden thought, Ichigo pushed away from the table and stood, avoiding Grimmjow’s laser-like gaze. He felt twitchy between the shoulders, like his clothes suddenly didn’t fit right. He jerked his chin at the stairs out in the hall.

“C’mon, I have stuff to do so let’s make this short. Kon’s in my bedroom.” He switched his gaze to his sister. “Can you bag something up to go?”

“Didn’t realise I was interrupting a busy schedule,” Grimmjow said lazily, rubbing his stomach. He got up slowly, casting a regretful glance at the hash browns. “Thought you could slot me in somewhere between breakfast and your bra fitting.”

“I’m not slotting you in anywhere,” Ichigo shot back, “and my bra fitting is next week.” He grabbed one bony wrist and tugged, thumb sliding over the shine of adhesive plastic and finding skin. Grimmjow must have been sleepy enough from his meal because he didn’t even protest, wandering along in his socks with obedience. Not for the first time, Ichigo caught himself wondering how this was his life now.

The ‘meeting’ with Kon turned out to be Grimmjow just tormenting him for fifteen minutes straight. Turning him this way and that, poking his beady eyes, making him gag with a finger down the throat, looking for the pill down inside. When it got to that stage Ichigo pulled Kon out of his grasp, unwilling to be the only adult in the room but apparently maturity standards had really dropped.

“Don’t let me die like this,” Kon begged up at him, his artificial eyes glistening wildly. “I will come back as a ghost and chew off your eyelids while you sleep, you negligent fucking tragedy of a teenage shinigamiiiiinononoooo—” The rest was cut off by muffled screaming as Ichigo shoved Kon up his t-shirt and face-first into his armpit.

Grimmjow was nodding with scholarly intensity as he watched. Ichigo shrugged.

“We’re actually good friends.”

“I get it.”

After Kon had finally passed out and had no more entertainment value, Grimmjow started examining, well, everything. Ichigo tried to look at his room with new eyes, feeling a little self-conscious the more he did so. What did his bedroom look like to someone like Grimmjow? Four walls and a couple of windows, a TV stand, some storage, desk and a slightly sagging double bed, which Grimmjow had planted himself straight down on the moment he’d wandered in. The boring bedroom of a boring almost-twenty year-old, and an arrancar seated in the middle like a blue-black gemstone set in mediocrity.

Okay, maybe that was a little too self-deprecating, Ichigo thought. And a little too much credit to Grimmjow’s appearance. The guy was an asshole, through and through. Just…maybe an interesting one.

“Did you ever fuck that redhead here? Oni? Origami?”

“What?” Ichigo blurted.

Grimmjow mistook his reaction for confusion, and stacked his hands out in front of his chest to mime breasts.

“Kurosaki-kuuuuuun!” he said in a falsetto, batting his eyelashes. Ichigo choked on his own spit and started coughing. Grimmjow rolled his eyes skyward. “You know, healing tits! Weren’t you and her fucking?”

“Her name’s Orihime, you dick, and no! We were never like that.”

Grimmjow stared at him long and hard, eyes like searchlights scanning him for word of a lie. Finally he snorted and threw himself back on the bed, shaking his head right into Ichigo’s pillow.

“The dog was right; you really are a tragedy.”

“Shut up.”

As far as retorts went it was a pretty weak one, but Ichigo couldn’t think of anything else to say. That made him annoyed, and soon annoyance turned to quiet fuming. So what if he never…with Inoue? They were friends. Were, since she’d moved closer to her community college, unable to afford the expense of university tuition fees. She emailed now and then, but it wasn’t anything like how they’d been. He’d always been kind of distant out of a sense it would protect her better. When she could no longer insist on helping with whatever shinigami adventure he’d undertaken, they’d drifted. Chad too. And Ishida…his dad had spirited him off to parts unknown. Quincy stuff, or maybe doctor stuff.

Spinning gently on his desk chair, the backrest under his chin as he faced the wrong way, Ichigo frowned contemplatively at the floor. When he glanced over at Grimmjow, his was surprised to find sharp blue eyes locked onto his.

“I guess we killed all your friends,” Ichigo said, voice strangely weak.

“Everyone killed everyone. Shit happens. I ate my best friends.” At Ichigo’s aghast expression, he flashed a wolfish grin. “They asked me to. You know, survival of the fittest and all that. Take a piece of what came before, building blocks of life…balance of the universe shit. It’s nature, Kurosaki. We cut our losses and survive. Or wallow and die. Whatever.”

It began to occur to Ichigo, like really sink in, that Grimmjow wasn’t just a guy with spiritual ability. Wasn’t just his rival, or enemy, or friend—someday friend. His entire world had been something out of Ichigo’s nightmares, seething with white-masked predators, and he’d…well, eaten some of them for dinner.

“Fuck you’re weird,” Ichigo said, and Grimmjow snorted a genuine laugh.

“Weirder than a shinigami who likes my company?”

“Who’s that?” Ichigo asked mildly, and copped his own pillow in the face. “Ugh, you made it smell like your head.”

“Sweet dreams tonight, asshole.” Deviltry was lighting every sharp angle on Grimmjow’s face.

“Get out of my house.”

It took another ten minutes for Grimmjow to actually comply, but once he did he was surprisingly quick about it. Maybe he had another session with Jinta and Ururu, or some work for Urahara. He took the proffered containers Yuzu had stacked for him in a bag, filled with all the breakfast leftovers and even half a batch of white chocolate pretzel cookies. The chewiest half, too. Yuzu had clearly chosen a new favourite. Jinta was going to die.

“You could probably bribe that kid with those,” Ichigo told Grimmjow as he jammed his feet back into his boots by the front door. “Bribe him to do anything.” It wasn’t exactly a secret that Jinta thought Yuzu had hung the moon. But Grimmjow just slitted his eyes. The upticked smear of green in each corner was made more pronounced by the expression.

“I’ll cut his fingers off if he touches these. Food is new to me, and I fuckin’ love it.”

Thunder was rumbling when Ichigo opened the door to let him out, and he saw a sky heavy with dark clouds. The term ‘pregnant with rain’ sprang to mind, and against the rising wind Ichigo looked back at Grimmjow. A question popped to mind.

“Wait, then how did you know you liked pancakes?”

Grimmjow looked strangely blank for an instant.

“Must’ve just assumed. Catch you Wednesday at the bar.”

Puzzled by the parting comment, Ichigo watched him stroll casually out into what was promising to be a wild storm coming in the next hour or so, hands jammed into his jeans pockets, elbows sharp and jutting back as he left the front path and headed out of sight.

“So weird,” Ichigo said to himself, and felt pretty okay with that.

 

* * *

 

 

Twenty-five minutes later, the storm landed like a hammer-blow direct from the heavens.

“Shit!” Isshin yelled as they rushed to get every window closed, buckets at the ready in case the roof leaked and candles lined up on the kitchen benchtop in case of blackout. The wind was howling around the house, windows lashed with the drumming hiss of a wind-driven downpour. “Battle stations, family!”

“Dad, we’re fine,” Ichigo said over the din, gesturing at everything they’d organised. Yuzu was standing at attention beside him, wound tight as a bowstring. “It’s just a storm. We’re locked up tight.” White light flashed through the windows: a blinding fork of lightning followed by a bone-shaking boom. Isshin screamed unashamedly and clutched his daughter. Ichigo figured the worst had to be right on top of them.

Then the lights went out. Great. Grabbing the long matches, Ichigo lit six of the heavy pillar candles and handed them off to Yuzu, then turned and chipped all the ice out of the fridge. The last thing they needed was more leaking if the power took a while to come back on.

It was close to midday by then, but the dark of the stormclouds made it look like twilight outside, and the rain obscured a view of anything more than vague smears of light and the skeletons of bending trees. It isolated them in the house, which by then was lit with the soft orange flicker of candleflame.

“It’s sorta cozy,” Ichigo said, almost to himself. Isshin looked up from where he was building a fort from the couch cushions.

“Ichigo we may actually all die today. Get in.”

“I’d rather walk into the storm. You get gassy when you’re scared.”

“It’s a threat response!”

Shaking his head, Ichigo grabbed one of the candles and headed for his room, figuring he and Kon could wait it out up there. Assuming he hadn’t packed a bindle and left after the armpit thing, anyway.

Kon was nowhere to be found, which meant he was under Yuzu’s bed waiting it out, or he’d dashed away to parts unknown. If he had, he’d be having a sodden party for one outside. Water was rushing down the roadside like tiny rapids, carrying dirt and debris away to the drains. Above Ichigo’s window, the roof gutters were above capacity, spilling a clear sheet of water that didn’t look like it was going to give up anytime soon. They’d need to clean them out once the weather dried up. Summer storms were always a bit wild, and the house had taken its fair share of damage from them over the years. Maybe some of his pay could go toward a bit of home maintenance.

Behind him, a familiar chirp signalled an incoming text. Startled, Ichigo glanced over at his desk, where a pale rectangle of light confirmed that yes, someone other than the two people in the house was trying to contact him. Approaching warily, Ichigo grabbed his old phone and squinted at the text glare.

_**[Sandal-Hat]:** Need you to chase down Grimmjow. Didn’t come home within alloted timeframe. Gigai going to self-destruct in eighteen minutes if he doesn’t get to your house or the shop._

Ichigo’s eyes widened. Self-destruct?! He didn’t even know if that would kill Grimmjow, but knowing Urahara it would hurt like hell. What was the point of that? He quickly tapped out a reply.

_Does Grimmjow know it’s going to blow up_

The reply was swift.

_**[Sandal-Hat]:** Forgot that detail, lol_

“Dick.”

 _ **[Sandal-Hat]:** Map attached. Would go myself but don’t want to get wet. Use shoe poo or you’ll just find a flesh puddle and some reiatsu when you get there. Thanx_  
_*sun poo  
_ _*shunpo!! Ducking autocorrect_

Following that was a series of furious red faced emojis, but Ichigo got the picture.

He had seventeen minutes to track Grimmjow’s gigai down and get him home before he detonated. In a raging storm. With a four street radius to search.

No big deal.

“ _Kon!!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first chapter in a while and i sting you with a cliffhanger, because of course i do


	4. Chapter 4

“Why do I have to come?!” Kon shrieked, yanking futilely at the crotch of his—technically Ichigo’s—jeans. He’d done about eight test squats in them already, ensuring he could move in Ichigo’s pants without tearing the ass out. “He’s a monster!”

“Because you’ve got speed and you can jump, and I need a hand!” Ichigo was already yanking the window open, feeling the hard mist of blown-in rain hit his cheeks and throat. Adjusting Zangetsu, he waved impatiently at the window. “Come on, it’s the right thing to do!”

“Every time you do the right thing you end up almost _dead_ , idiot.” Ichigo noted his face was really good at conveying disgust when Kon was wearing it. “I’m not participating in your cycle of self-destruction and enabling your stupid hero complex!”

“If you stay you have to get in the cushion fort with Dad.”

“All right, let’s do this, let’s save that rabid serial killer! Get out of the way Ichigo, I’m gonna jump.”

That was how they ended up surging from rooftop to rooftop, buffeted by wind and rain, the sharp crack of thunder breaking around them and ahead, lightning crawling through the clouds. It was dark with rain toward the south-east of town, and according to the map Urahara had sent, that was exactly the direction they had to go.

The rain whipped through Ichigo’s clothes as he leapt, bracingly cold and sharp with the wind driving it. Despite not being an entirely physical entity, things like nature, rooftops and walls were still as tangible as ever. That included being blasted in the face with sideways downpours. The joys of the reiryoku abundant.

“What am I supposed to do if I find him? Scream?” Kon was hauling toward the map point almost faster than Ichigo was, legs strong and seemingly longer and more agile than they were when Ichigo used them. For a mod soul, Kon complained a lot, but he loved nothing more than to hop into a body and run—even if it meant running straight toward Grimmjow. “Grab him and run?”

“Tell him to go home,” Ichigo said, wiping rainwater off his mouth. “Urahara’s, I mean.”

“He can’t run there in ten minutes! That gigai is the lame duck of merchandise.”

“Then—get him to me. I’ll do something.”

“Like what?” Kon shouted over the crack of thunder, eyes sharp and narrowed. His eyes. Ichigo wasn’t getting used to that anytime soon.

“I don’t know, but if you grab him he’ll know you’re not me, so just do it.”

“How would he know?” Kon narrowly missed breaking a rusted gutter overflowing with leaves and water. “This is your body!”

Ichigo couldn’t quite explain why his first instinct was that Grimmjow could pick him out of a lineup of clones, but he was absolutely sure it was true. Something about that laserlike gaze just said _I know you_ with horrible certainty. Also, Kon probably wouldn’t be protected by the gigai’s reiatsu restrictions, and he needed to have a working body to get back into.

The shopping district was mostly empty in the streets when they got there, with a few cars parked on the roadside, wipers frantically ticking back and forth until the rain gave them visibility to drive again. A few people were taking shelter under the eaves of the supermarket, looking nonplussed by the deluge. Not one of them had blue hair and a scowl.

Cursing, Ichigo figured the map pin would lead to the worst possible area. Anywhere in the shopping district, it seemed, and ten minutes to find Grimmjow before he detonated.

“I’ll take the next street over.” Kon gave him a little wave and darted off at high speed, arms pumping in a theatrical manner. “Get out of the way, peasants!” he hollered at the cluster of people trying to stay dry up ahead. “Kurosaki Ichigo sends his regards!”

“Asshole.” Ichigo couldn’t think long on the besmirching of his reputation though; the clock was still ticking and honestly, he didn’t know what the hell he was trying so hard for, since Grimmjow probably wouldn’t die if the gigai went off like new years fireworks. He just wouldn’t have a gigai anymore. Ichigo tried not to be too concerned by the alarmed clench in his stomach at the possibility they wouldn’t be able to drink together on Wednesday nights anymore. Seeing Grimmjow twice a week for the last month hadn’t been a burden at all.

Shaking off his thoughts, Ichigo began running down the streets, feeling rain slip down his nape and into the collar of his shihakushou. He was completely soaked through, the black cloth clinging unpleasantly to his skin and dripping trails of water at the sleeves. Staring down alleyways, into stores with windows that shone white with cold fluorescent light, down the emptying sidewalks. Nothing, nothing, and no idea where to look. Shit. Grimmjow didn’t even have any reiatsu to sense when he was wearing that thing.

Urahara was going to have some explaining to do later. Was this some kind of anti-theft protection for a gigai literally nobody would ever want to use? Or a social experiment for Ichigo? One was probably just as likely as the other.

The hell was he supposed to do? There wasn’t enough time, and in his shinigami form he couldn’t even ask anyone nearby if they’d seen—

Ichigo’s head whipped around, eyes scanning for the kind of wayward spirits that would frequent a high pedestrian area with a lot of road traffic. Come on, people got run over all the time, surely…but there was nothing. That afro guy had really been doing his job lately. Peace was such an asshole.

There had to be only around two minutes left.

With no time, Ichigo did the only thing he could think of. Surely Urahara had left Grimmjow with this one ability, when the gigai had stripped everything else.

Summoning the first wave of his own spiritual energy, feeling it rise blue and silver at the edges of his vision, Ichigo pushed it out of himself, right there and standing in the middle of an empty road. The air was heavy with ozone and petrichor from the storm, laying thick on his skin despite the rain. As best he could without raising a fuss, Ichigo made himself the kind of beacon that Grimmjow couldn’t possibly ignore. Turning himself into a shiny piece of bait was only demeaning if it worked—

Sprinting out of a side alley Ichigo was _sure_ he’d checked, a familiar lanky figure with blue hair came racing out onto the street, eyes alive with ferocious interest. Spotting Ichigo, his face transformed in a snarling kind of smile. He was still holding Yuzu’s breakfast doggie bag.

“Oy, shinigami,” Grimmjow said broadly, scanning Ichigo up and down, “sending some hollow to the afterlife? I just gotta get out of this fuckin’ body stocking.”

“You have no idea,” Ichigo said with heartfelt relief, right before he yanked off his shinigami badge and slammed it against Grimmjow’s gigai heart.

Blue light erupted around them both, and the sensation of reiryoku fraying in the air was like nails on a chalkboard to Ichigo’s spiritual senses. It wasn’t just the aura it created, but the actual feeling of Grimmjow’s power eroding under his hand. The gigai had begun to enter its detonation phase. Early, Ichigo was sure, breathing ozone and blinking through the light. Or the badge had done it—whatever it was, Grimmjow howled like he’d been set on fire and tried to leap away.

“Stop,” Ichigo said desperately, grabbing his shoulder to claw fingers in the material of his shirt. “Don’t fight! I’m trying to help.”

Grimmjow made a sound like a wounded animal. Across the street, alarmed people were taking steps forward to approach. To them, he was alone, and no light would surround him. A fist punched Ichigo in the side of the head, but in the gigai it did less than nothing.

“Fuck—off—me, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow snarled, trying to writhe away. Veins of white were crawling up the gigai’s forearms, lit from within. With appalled eyes they both stared, until Ichigo slammed the badge’s sigil against Grimmjow again, trying to get the damn thing to shove an arrancar out of a modded trap of a body.

“Don’t fight it,” Ichigo urged, reaching up to catch Grimmjow’s jaw in his hand and yank his head down until they were eye to eye. “ _Trust_ me.”

For an instant Grimmjow was nothing but wide, startled blue eyes and the rush of hot breath panted against Ichigo’s face. His eyelids flinched, once, and then his eyes slammed shut in mute agreement, his jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth. But Ichigo felt the give in his reiryoku, something shapeless and crackling in the damp bed of his artificial skin, and pushed the sigil with that shattering spark in mind.

In one surge, the gigai fell to the road like a discarded string puppet.

Grimmjow stayed standing. Steam rose off his arrancar skin, which sparked faintly with disrupted energy. Rain slid over the smooth curve of his broken mask. The jawbone was strangely unfamiliar to Ichigo for an instant, and he snatched his eyes away from it in time for Grimmjow to level him the kind of look that promised so much pain if he didn’t get explaining soon.

Ichigo only had one word for him. “Urahara.”

“Fuck,” Grimmjow seethed, stepping out of the gigai’s heels and leaping backward as three people shouted for help, trying to turn the gigai over and speak to it. “What’s he done?”

“Put a curfew on it, I think.” Ichigo scratched his cheek, unseen by the people milling about. “I don’t think you’re supposed to go anywhere outside the kidou barrier for long. It was starting to explode, or something, when I grabbed you.” Ichigo squinted at him. “Are you okay? It looked painful.”

“No shit.” Tension made a nerve jump in the exposed side of his jaw. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Something was crawling between Ichigo’s shoulderblades, and it felt a lot like nervousness. Grimmjow was in a civilian district, outside his gigai, and he was mad as hell. If he wanted to get any kind of revenge for Urahara’s little stunt, collateral damage was going to be a forefront concern.

“My food!” Grimmjow said suddenly, reaching for the bag some kid was looking into interestedly while adults tried to revive the gigai. “Oh, shit, they’re trying to make out with the gigai. They’re undoing my shirt!”

“CPR,” Ichigo sighed, staring straight up into the falling rain. It wasn’t possible to be any more done with this entire situation than he was just then. “They think you’re dead.”

“Matter of perspective,” Grimmjow said after a moment, nudging Ichigo with his shoulder. Ichigo nudged back reflexively.

“We’re all dead if we don’t get this gigai back to Urahara’s shop. They might try to autopsy it.”

“Autopsy? Like on television?” Grimmjow mimed a Y-shaped cut on his torso, then simulated pulling his ripcage open like cabinet doors. Grossed out, Ichigo mimed shutting the ribcage before he could think about it. Grimmjow’s hackles seemed to have gone down a little, the violence in his frame draining away. He even smiled at Ichigo. It wasn’t quite as bloodthirsty as usual.

“Squeamish,” Grimmjow pronounced, almost smugly. Ichigo gave him an expressionless bird to think about. He swiped at the hand, prompting Ichigo to yank it back out of range and smack his hand away, his footwork taking him backward through the puddles gathering in uneven blacktop on the road. Grimmjow followed like a cat chasing a sparrow, eyes vivid with interest.

“We should get back to Urahara’s, you know.” Between lazy swipes and casual dodging, Ichigo realised he was…playing? Playing with Grimmjow. “Let him know you’re not trying to leave town in his custom transport.”

“Who cares? Let him collect the goods himself. I’m finally feeling good in my skin, outside that damn bunker for once. Doesn’t rain in there, Kurosaki. Doesn’t rain in Hueco Mundo either.”

“You like rain,” Ichigo said reluctantly, not sure he wanted to learn something like that. He leaned out of range of a slow jab, swiping a rivulet of water off his face so he could see better. Grimmjow was shrugging.

“Try new shit, right?”

“Right.”

Ichigo was wondering if he should add to that reply when Kon came jogging over to them, screeching and holding the phone, which was showing an open phone call from [Sandal-Hat].

“Talk to this asshole,” Kon begged, tapping speaker. “He keeps asking me about my sexual health, Ichigo.”

Ichigo leaned toward the phone, not even sure it could transmit his voice, but Grimmjow got there first.

“You,” he said emphatically, “are a first-rate festering dicksore, Kisuke. I hope the ghost of your mother shits in your mouth while you sleep.”

“You’re alive!” Urahara said merrily, in a voice of such innocent sunshine and light that Ichigo almost felt his teeth ache. “What a fortuitous day. Good work, Kurosaki-san, I knew I could count on you. Your reiatsu signature was quite distinctive across the square; interesting use of resources and target psychology—and exactly why I sent you.”

Ichigo glared at the phone. “You sent me because you didn’t want to get wet, remember?”

“Did I say that? My, my.” A step away, Grimmjow was rolling his eyes. “Well, I’m initiating the gigai’s base return orders, so don’t be surprised when it gets up and comes home. With the power out on our block we don’t have enough hot water for Grimmjow to take a shower here, so you won’t mind putting him up for the night, will you Kurosaki-san? I took the liberty of sending Tessai to manipulate Isshin’s kidou barrier while you were busy.”

Ichigo frowned speculatively. Kon was making throat-cutting gestures at him, eyes fixed and horrified. Grimmjow watched the exchange, strangely silent.

“Just take that stupid curfew bomb off the gigai,” Ichigo said shortly, and tapped to end the call. Kon moaned pitifully. He ignored it. “C’mon, I’m starting to prune up.”

“Wait til you get a load of the chafing on your thighs,” Kon said glumly, waddling a little as he walked. “Wet jeans are the worst, Ichigo. The worst. Go on ahead if you want—I’ll wait out the rain and dry off for you.”

“Thanks, Kon.” Surprisingly thoughtful, and also a great excuse to avoid Grimmjow. Still, Ichigo couldn’t fault Kon for bothering to come out and help in the first place, not to mention braving the storm to look for an actual ticking timebomb that liked to touch him up. For a selfish pervert, he had a heart of gold under all that felt and stuffing.

Ichigo made it three paces away before he realised Grimmjow wasn’t following him. But then, he hadn’t asked, had he? Asshole move, assuming like that. Maybe he wanted to go somewhere else now that Urahara had let him off the leash for the night. Turning to look over his shoulder, he met a tense, unhappy gaze. Rain was still drumming on the sharp set of his shoulders. The black-on-black of his ensemble made him look like a fireplace poker, so rigidly he stood. Ichigo tried to remember if he’d done something wrong.

“…aren’t you coming?” he asked finally, not sure how to extend an invitation. “You can sleep on the couch if you don’t want the floor in my room. Yuzu will probably cook something good for dinner.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Can’t do any fighting though, or drinking. And I guess—”

“Talk a lot when you’re nervous, Kurosaki.” Grimmjow looked a little bit unsettled, but mostly mollified.

“I’m not _nervous_ ,” Ichigo said, nervously. Annoyed at himself, he reached back and grabbed Grimmjow’s wrist, hauling him forward until they were of even pace. “Shut up and sleep with me.” _Fuck!_ “Sleep at my house.”

Yanking his arm free of Ichigo’s grip, Grimmjow gave a quick bark of laughter and caught the back of Ichigo’s neck in the crook of his elbow, long arm sliding over his shoulder. Rain dripped off the pale fingers that hung just over Ichigo’s heart.

“You’re a fuckin’ riot, Kurosaki.” A beat, then, “Thought you were leavin’ me on the street.”

“Not me.”

“Not you,” Grimmjow agreed, his tone easy. But his eyes were sharp. “You aren’t tryin’a tame me down for Soul Society, are you? You and Urahara? Keeps occurring to me that we’re bein’ used, and then I think, maybe I’m being used.”

Ichigo blinked, but kept his eyes on the road. “Soul Society doesn’t tell me anything anymore,” he said flatly, rubbing rain off his mouth with an equally wet sleeve. He glanced over at Grimmjow once. “But if they were manipulating us it’d probably be the dumbest plan they ever concocted.”

The green smears in the tilted corner of Grimmjow’s eyes curved knowingly. “Why’s that?”

“Because I think we’d be a better team than we ever were enemies, and right now we don’t owe them shit.” He shrugged under the lanky weight of Grimmjow’s arm. “But honestly, I think Urahara is just amusing himself.”

Grimmjow didn’t reply right away, instead opting to study him through narrowed eyes. In his natural arrancar form there were subtle differences Ichigo hadn’t had time to notice when they fought. Apart from the obvious, like the mask and the hollow hole, Grimmjow had a slightly different bearing. Maybe he even smelled different, a scent that gave Ichigo memories of dark deserts and white sand. The sweep of his hair was more of an unruly blue coiffure, maybe, but then that wasn’t really it either. Maybe it was just the arm around his shoulders, which didn’t feel like a burden or a yoke to hold him down. Maybe it was standing saturated in his reiatsu, knowing his was doing the same to Grimmjow, and not feeling his blood boil with adrenaline. Like equals.

 

 

“I’m sleeping in your bed,” Grimmjow announced abruptly. Ichigo’s foot scuffed on the road and he almost tripped. The arm on his shoulders tensed to keep him upright, palm splayed on his chest. “Since I’m the guest and all.”

“I’m not changing the sheets just so you can complain about my bedsprings all night.”

“Leave the sheets,” Grimmjow said with a snort. “If your scent pissed me off I wouldn’t be standin’ this close, breathing rain and sweat and bacon.” As if to punctuate his point, he stuck his nose directly in Ichigo’s wet hair, just behind his ear. “Smelled worse than you before, Kurosaki.”

Ichigo felt his skin prickle up in reflex—just reflex—and pointedly ignored it as he pushed himself free of the arm looping him in place.

“Fine, but I get my pillow.” Even if it was going to smell like Grimmjow, after he’d rubbed his face all over it that morning. “Think we can probably convince Yuzu to make pancakes for dinner, with all this rain going on.”

Grimmjow squinted. “I can’t eat anything,” he said at length. “Not without the gigai. It’s all cardboard to me.”

“Oh, right.” That would actually suck. “Save it for next time then.”

“Next time.” Grimmjow was using that easy voice again, the one that said he was thinking about something else. “Next time Urahara tries to blow me up, or next time I got some excuse to get in your house?”

Ichigo thought about the treatment of his home through the years. Rukia moving into his wardrobe. Casual visits through the window by other shinigami. Renji turning up at random to go through his stuff and play games on his phone. Toshirou and Rangiku and the others using his bedroom as a war room to discuss strategy. Despite the angry knot in his chest that he tried to deny, he missed his Soul Society friends coming and going as they pleased. Til they dropped him like trash after his usefulness ended, anyway. Really should have seen that coming after the time he lost his powers. Looking over at Grimmjow, Ichigo wondered something he couldn’t help but give voice to.

“Say we fight for real one day and you win. What do you do then?” The rest went unspoken, still caught in Ichigo’s throat. He knew, he knew he shouldn’t be even curious about the answer to a question like that, not when Grimmjow lived for battle and blood and little else. But there was a strong chance that Ichigo was developing a friendship in his own mind, and hell if he was doing that again for not much in return. Better to just ask and leave it as sparring partners, before he started giving a shit.

Too late, some small part of him murmured as Grimmjow pulled his head back and frowned curiously.

“You want to know if I’d kill you?”

“I want to know what you’d do once I stopped being a goal for you.”

Blue eyes slitted at Ichigo. A long finger stabbed into his chest, leaving behind a small bloom of pain.

“If you’re trying to fuckin’ get rid of me by throwing a match, Kurosaki, don’t think I won’t figure it out in ten seconds flat and rip out your spine for the damn insult.” Grimmjow was infuriated by the idea—and completely missing the point of his question. Like he hadn’t even considered his future afterwards. “You left me alive in Hueco Mundo after thrashing the shit out of me, and insulted me twice by saving me from that teaspoon-head asshole Nnoitra. I’ll know when I’ve fuckin’ beat you or not. Til then, you’ll be seein’ me.”

Ichigo darted him a look. Not the answer to his question, but still.

“Short of going after Inoue’s life, there’s no way I was going to kill you back then.” Scowling, he added, “Nnoitra nearly ended us both, besides. You’d have defended me too, if it had been the other way around.” At that, Grimmjow gave him a look of pure incredulity.

“How d’you figure?”

Ichigo just shrugged. “You’d never let anyone else kill me.”

Grimmjow stared at him, but Ichigo wasn’t about to take it back. Instead he continued walking down the street, feeling the rain finally starting to let up as the clouds moved on. His chest hurt from Grimmjow jabbing him. The guy had fingers like knitting needles.

“Guess you’re right, but think about it: in this pattern, fighting and losing and not letting anyone kill the other…” he slanted Ichigo a strange look. “I’m always up for a fight, Kurosaki, but you got better things to be doing. We’ll be growin’ old together at this rate.”

“Guess you’d better beat me and kill me then.”

“Right,” Grimmjow agreed, sticking his hands in his pockets. His shoulders were hunched by the movement, and for the second time Ichigo thought the jawbone mask looked out of place. At his waist, his sword was belted almost as an afterthought. Maybe his incongruous look had something to do with his wearing black instead of white, and the fact they were both soaked to the bone. Catching Ichigo’s curious stare, Grimmjow looked down at himself.

“White wasn’t my colour,” he said, sounding deep.

“White isn’t a colour.”

The look of intensely shitty displeasure that earned him made Ichigo smile about as widely as he could remember doing in the last few months. Then Grimmjow launched himself at him, and for a few minutes the world was nothing but puddles of water, warm tarred road under his back and a desperate few forearm blocks and returned punches. And laughter: immature and helpless as they rolled like schoolyard kids, scraped and bruised, swords forgotten.

Ichigo thought he had their tussle won when he finally pinned Grimmjow under him, thighs clamping around his knees, one wrist pinned and his other arm pressed to his own chest. Breathing hard, feeling the heat of a burgeoning bruise rise on his cheek, he leaned down to inform Grimmjow he’d lost.

Grimmjow was blinking rain out of his eyes just to stare at Ichigo, an unreadable expression in his narrowed gaze. Unconsciously, Ichigo felt his hands relax their hold. Neither moved.

“You’re not trying to blunt my teeth, are you? Gigai or arrancar or whatever, it’s all the same to you. The hell is that about, Kurosaki?”

“Back at you,” Ichigo retorted, flexing the hand holding Grimmjow’s arm to his own chest. “Human or shinigami, drinking or trying to kill each other. I think we’re becoming friends.”

Grimmjow’s expression was neither smile nor snarl as he leaned up as far as he could. Ichigo caught himself watching a small rivulet of water travel down the side of his nose and follow the corner of his mouth. It disappeared beneath the smooth white of his mask. When Ichigo looked back, a rough sort of conflict was reflected in the eyes meeting his.

“Nah,” Grimmjow said finally. “Don’t think we’ll ever be that.”

Words stolen by the honesty of it, Ichigo couldn’t think of anything to say to that right away. Instead, he took his hands back and slid away, backing up to get to his feet again. The hand he offered to Grimmjow was snorted at, but once they were both standing a familiar bony fist crashed into his shoulder.

“You didn’t win that, you know.”

“Ow.”

Ichigo was still rubbing his shoulder when pedestrians started screaming. Taut with an abrupt surge of adrenaline, he spun around wide-eyed to see—

“The zombies are coming!” Kon was shrieking between cupped hands, as Grimmjow’s gigai got up with an empty-eyed stare and started bonelessly slouching down the road toward Urahara’s shop. The people crowding him fled, scattering like pigeons. One woman was crossing herself, complexion white as salt. Kon hopped from foot to foot in glee, sheltered by the supermarket overhang. “Don’t dead open inside! _Run for your lives!_ ”

Grimmjow took one look at the mayhem and started laughing. It was the laugh of someone who pulled the wings off flies as a child, Ichigo was sure of it. Crazy fucker. Meanwhile, Kon’s antics were going to get him committed to an asylum.

“I’m going home,” Ichigo announced, and didn’t even care if nobody heard him. The afternoon was officially a bust.

 

* * *

 

High above, the sun began to spear through the thinning clouds in a dazzling shot of golden light. It completely masked the slight girl perched high on the cell tower at the end of the street, her cropped dark hair surrounded in a delicate halo of butterflies.

“Arrancar presence confirmed,” Kuchiki Rukia said grimly, touching the largest hell butterfly. “Combat pass belonging to Kurosaki Ichigo has been activated on anomaly. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez is at large.

“Awaiting further orders.”


	5. Chapter 5

If Ichigo had any illusions about Grimmjow softening up towards him in the wake of that stormy day, they were all casually obliterated in their next match.

If anything, his ferocity seemed to increase in direct correlation with his mood: in his enjoyment, his strikes were almost frenzied, each sweep of his sword calculated to deal massive damage. To Ichigo, the landscape, his damn clothes, it didn’t matter. And while the blue eyes glaring at him over the slick gleam of steel were radiating violent delight, each move seemed to say one thing in particular: don’t you go soft on _me_ , shinigami, or it’ll be the last shitty thing you do.

Ichigo could respect that. Actually, he had to—Grimmjow’s fighting style was pure brawl and slash, completely unpredictable until the last possible second. It was put up or be put down, and like hell Ichigo was staying on the defensive, trying to get a read on the battle by parry and dodge alone. Grimmjow could take the punishment, besides.

The knee Ichigo drove straight under Grimmjow’s ribs was pure wickedness, as was the curl of his smile as the breath _woofed_ out of his opponent in one surprised huff. Sweeping Grimmjow’s blade aside with Zangetsu, Ichigo leapt back out of his guard just in time to keep the tip of his nose, the edge of the sword winging across his vision like a windmill blade.

“You double-jointed or something?” Ichigo panted, darting back three paces and thrusting forward, allowing the parry to swing a fist at Grimmjow’s mask. One arch of his spine and that was successfully avoided, leaving Ichigo leaping over a brutal leg-swipe. It had been almost an hour like that, breathing dust and pouring sweat. In front of him, Grimmjow bared his teeth in a predator’s smile.

“Flexible like a cat, Kurosaki. A jungle cat.” A broad, obvious stroke of his sword came down. Ichigo parried mechanically, but his eyes were darting about for the trick.

“Cats can lick their own balls, you know.” Using the amusement that elicited to his advantage, Ichigo was able to duck the outstretched hand coming for his hair. Like hell he was going to have a bald spot after the asshole yanked out a tuft. Grabbing the reaching arm, he pulled hard and tucked his chin down for a headbutt. The resulting pain was worth it for the muffled curse he earned. Looking up, he saw he’d busted Grimmjow’s lip. Nice. “What’s the point system for one of those?”

“Five,” Grimmjow grunted, spitting blood into the dirt. “Head like a fuckin’ boulder.” Giving himself some distance, he eyed Ichigo speculatively. Ichigo was satisfied to note his clothes were shredded from near-misses; his blue tank had been reduced to little more than a ragged flag hanging over sweaty skin. “Some dirty moves you’re pulling.”

“You tried to stab me in the ass fifteen minutes ago,” Ichigo reminded him, panting. “Figured dirty was on the table.”

Grimmjow just gave a single crack of laughter and changed his grip on his sword. Realising what he’d said, Ichigo felt his face heat, but adrenaline and the itch of sweat rolling down his back translated his embarrassment to a more visceral desire to attack. Like a self-proclaimed animal scenting danger, Grimmjow’s reiatsu flared like hackles and they were off again, tearing skin and clothing, clashing swords and bruising bodies while the ground cracked around them.

It was a damn good afternoon.

 

* * *

  

They always ended up in the same state of physical ruin.

Ichigo stared at the artificial blue that masqueraded as a sky and wondered if he was some kind of pain fetishist. His answer was revealed when he leaned against the rock behind him and felt his spine light up in agony.

“Fff…”

“Fuck,” Grimmjow agreed wearily, propped up beside him. His hair was hanging over his brow in sweaty, dirty strands, head almost bowed in exhaustion. It was their usual recovery position after the kind of devastating attack that killed the last reserves of their energy; almost totally incapacitated, it was either some kind of broken starfish shape on the ground or a desperate elbow-crawl toward something to keep them upright. “Still think you’re holdin’ out on me, but I got you beat this time.”

“We agreed no top-level transformations or suicide attacks,” Ichigo said, shutting his eyes. “Isn’t it harder to keep it all controlled and fight at the same time? Worse, you’re actually faster than me when you want to be.” He levelled Grimmjow a suspicious look. “Are you training alone as well?”

“Nah.” When Ichigo squinted at him, Grimmjow just shrugged. “Not alone. Kisuke and Yoruichi double-team me when they’re in the mood. Usually I gotta piss ‘em off first though.”

Ichigo quietly tensed with alarm, then almost cringed as his body told him exactly what it thought of that. Grimmjow was getting training from those two? At the same time? Strangeness tugged in the pit of his stomach at the thought, something he didn’t want to label just yet. Forcing himself to settle, Ichigo tried for nonchalance.

“I’m guessing Yoruichi was fighting in her shinigami form.” A thought struck him. “That’s the second time you’ve called him Kisuke.”

“So?”

“So it’s weird.”

“I didn’t pick his name.”

“No, I mean—I don’t know.” And he didn’t, really. Self-directed annoyance souring his mood, Ichigo wondered exactly when he’d be good to get up and leave. Pushing himself wouldn’t do any favours, but he didn’t exactly want to hang around either. Grumbling to himself, he plucked at the shoulder of his kosode to bring it up into place, but it was torn at the upper seam and simply fell down his arm again. Glancing up from his failed attempt, he was pinned in place by the look Grimmjow was giving him. Stubbornly, Ichigo refused to look away, almost glaring at the lean angles of his face. How’d an arrancar manage to still have a perfectly straight nose, anyway?

“You jealous?” Grimmjow asked bluntly. Dried blood was still painting the corner of his mouth a rusted red.

Ichigo clenched his teeth and fists. “Want me to be?”

“I might.” Injured mouth quirking at Ichigo’s reflexive surprise, Grimmjow dabbed the back of his hand to his lips and spat into the dirt again. The tongue that flashed out to swipe his teeth clean was very pink. “I’d be pissed if you were training with your shinigami friends.”

Ichigo envied that kind of simple honesty, without any fear of injuries it might earn. He used to have that once, he was sure of it. When the hell did that become some scramble to hide how left behind he felt? The closing gates of Soul Society echoed up in his mind, pristine white and final. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. And Grimmjow seriously wondered if he was still in touch with any other shinigami.

“I’m not.” Ichigo felt strangely deflated, robbed of his irritation. “I don’t fight anyone but you.”

“Good.”

Ichigo blinked. “That’s weird. You can’t just say stuff like that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re supposed to—fake it a bit. Think that on the inside and say something nicer on the outside.”

Grimmjow’s look was flat.

“You’ve got some fuckin’ issues.”

Despite himself Ichigo laughed, rough and helpless. His ribs punished him for it, naturally, leaving him gripping them with one hand while tears of laughter gathered in the corners of his eyes. It ended in him coughing painfully, stuck in some kind of seizure between pain and clearing his lungs. Grimmjow just watched him with curiosity and faint amusement, knee pulled up to rest his arm on top, the fresh smear of blood across his lip clashing with the green beneath his eyes. He looked about as shitty as Ichigo felt, all shredded clothes and bleeding scratches and scrapes, covered in a light coating of dirt from several vicious tumbles across the rubble they’d created.

To Ichigo’s eyes, he still looked pretty good. Had he come off worse in that fight? Grimmjow’s stamina was insane under the handicap they’d imposed on their fights, but Ichigo had held his own last time. The training with Urahara had to be paying off. But why was he doing it? Was it out of boredom, or wanting to compare styles? Or maybe once a week wasn’t enough for him.

“You fucked yourself up this time,” Grimmjow said approvingly. “C’mon, Urahara’s got those healing springs here somewhere.”

The pure insult of it was that Grimmjow got up with only a little stiffness and pain, while Ichigo was a brutalised mess of tender flesh and cracked ribs that had to be hauled up with an arm yanked over and around a set of grimy shoulders. Grimmjow was outright smirking at the position they were in, but there was also an edge in the set of his brows.

“You hold back so the roof doesn’t cave in, shinigami. Not so I stay in one piece.”

“I _wasn’t_ going easy. I just didn’t realise—” a sudden jostle of Grimmjow’s shoulder made him gasp, “that you’d had time to improve that much. Who improves that much in a week?”

“You do.” The words were curt, matter-of-fact. They shut down anything Ichigo might have said in reply. Instead he kept his tongue behind his teeth as they shuffle-walked toward the north-east side of the bunker, where high ridges of rock shielded an area Ichigo hadn’t paid much attention to in recent times.

The first thing he really registered was the humid gust of steam against his cheeks. It didn’t have the usual smell of sulfur that accompanied hot springs, which always indicated the setup wasn’t entirely created by natural means. He looked up from his shuffling feet to the blue pool spreading out a few feet from the jutting rocks, where pale brown sediment and stone dropped unnaturally into steaming water.

“I used these ages ago—or something like them.” Ichigo glanced up at Grimmjow. “Have you?”

“Nah. Figured it was for weaklings.”

Ichigo’s feet dug in hard, scattering pebbles and dirt. “I’m _not_ _—_ ”

“You punched my ribs out of order and I’m gonna piss blood after that kick in the kidneys. I’m gettin’ in.” A slitted blue glance. “If you are.”

From anyone else, it might feel like a compromise, or something to salve his ego. From Grimmjow, it was nothing of the sort. Ichigo had first-hand experience with his brand of raw honesty bordering on insult. It was probably the only thing that convinced him to nod instead of shrug away and limp home. Besides, his back really hurt. No, it seemed to be something like an agreement between them: I’ll do it if you will, and neither of us has to feel weak. Ichigo never really minded the healing springs, but in this kind of setting, yeah, maybe it was a kind of concession. Ever the reminder that Grimmjow didn’t consider them friends, and never would.

“Fine,” he said reluctantly, and let Grimmjow deposit him against a large boulder near the water so he could start tugging off the shredded remains of his shihakushou. Every movement was painful, stiff and angled awkwardly so he didn’t have to strain muscles already abused from their fight. Nakedness didn’t really bother him in front of Grimmjow; they were both lean as starved hyenas in their spirit form, mostly from beating the hell out of each other. Still, Ichigo did take a speculative glance down at the ridge and dip of his muscles and wondered if his bones were sticking out too much. Was he eating enough?

Pushing it from his thoughts, Ichigo dumped his clothes in a ragged pile and sat at the edge of the hot springs, taking a deep breath of courage as he shoved himself straight into the steaming blue water. The shock of heat against his skin was sharp and jarring, blood rising to his skin in a tingling rush of pink, but inside of a few nose-breathing seconds where it was touch-and-go, everything settled down to humming heat and the enveloping grip of water up to his shoulders.

When Ichigo eventually opened his eyes, Grimmjow was a short distance away, still scooting his hips into the water.

“It doesn’t bite,” Ichigo said, unintentionally lazy with the soft tug of healing minerals already working on his muscles.

Grimmjow just glared—and while glaring pointedly, shoved himself neck-deep into the water. Ichigo had a brief glance of plunging skin and the piercing gape of a hollow hole before it was all hidden from view, a few feet away in the steaming water. Whatever. Naked guys bathed together in public baths all the time.

For a while, everything was silent, both of them simply letting the water do its work. Ichigo was very definitely not casting any glances in any direction, his eyes slammed shut in peaceful absorption of the otherworldly minerals, sighing as they bubbled and steamed their way along his bruised skin, healing in a silent and almost effervescent rush. Almost immediately his pain began to fade, the deep bright ache of his ribs dulling into something almost manageable. It gave him back more of his mobility—enough to twist and look at Grimmjow, who’d risen out of the water again enough to brace his arms on the edge of the smooth rock surrounding the pool. His head was tipped back, causing droplets of water to run down the bared line of his throat.

“Does this heal you too?” Ichigo asked interestedly. It did look like Grimmjow was relaxing into it, but that could just be the effect of hot water.

“Why wouldn’t it?” Rolling his head onto his shoulder, Grimmjow slanted Ichigo a heavy-lidded look. “Shinigami aren’t that different from the arrancar. Racist.”

Ichigo’s cheeks went hot. “I’m not racist! I was curious about the difference is all. You have a hole through your guts that you manage to function totally normally with.” When Grimmjow just rolled his eyes and literally handwaved that off, Ichigo couldn’t help but ask, “Where—where the hell does your spine even go? My hand went right through there and it’s totally empty.”

“No fuckin’ idea.”

“Don’t you want to know?” Ichigo pressed.

“I don’t give a shit, Kurosaki. I can stand, I can walk and I can fight.” A frown touched his brow. “Ulquiorra had one through his throat, but he could still talk shit with the best of them.”

Ichigo didn’t like the reminder of Ulquiorra. The memory of heatless green eyes staring him down, dispassionate and joyless as he moved to dispatch him like a nuisance flickered on the edges of his mind, like a shadow in the corner of his eye. The rest was a black and red blur of vicious rage. To distract himself, Ichigo left his spot on the spring’s edge, submerging his head and darting to the other side, where a more comfortably-curved rock awaited. It put him in arm’s reach of Grimmjow, but didn’t bother worrying about it. Combing his wet hair back with both hands, he settled back to finish healing.

“You know, if we used this after every fight, we could probably go three times a week,” Ichigo said, trying for offhandedness. “Unless you want to keep training with Urahara and Yoruichi.”

“Fuck no,” Grimmjow said with feeling. “I always end up naked for some reason. They’re always going for my pants and not my sword. Feel like I’m fighting a couple of rapists. Plus Tessai told Kisuke—Urahara—about the hole thing, thanks very fucking much. He keeps asking if he can put his hand in.” Looking frustrated, and a bit uncomfortable about his admission, Grimmjow frowned hard at Ichigo. “It’s not like I need you protecting my honour or some shit like that, but at least when you feel me up it’s by accident.”

Ichigo started, hissing at a twinge of his ribs. “I wasn’t feeling you up, you fell on me!”

“Nobody in the history of time ever accepted that as a real excuse.”

“Back at you,” Ichigo shot back. “Maybe—maybe you were copping the feel when you ‘slipped’ off the ladder.”

Grimmjow snorted loudly. “If I wanted to feel you up I’d just _do_ it, not orchestrate some fake bullshit.”

With every exchange their conversation was spiralling further into strange territory, and yet Ichigo couldn’t make himself shut the hell up.

“You’d never,” Ichigo said, and to his quiet horror, it came out sounding a lot like a dare. Why wasn’t he shutting the hell up?

Grimmjow just smiled his wolf’s smile: teeth sharp and gleaming like knives. The ripple of the water around his chest was all the indication he gave, but it was just enough that Ichigo kicked off the side of the pool and shot like a cork from a bottle, and for the second time since finding him again Grimmjow grabbed his ankle and yanked, reeling Ichigo back in like an exhausted fish on a line. “Oh, come on!”

Grimmjow had him caught in a net of arms and wet skin in seconds. A sharp chin sank onto Ichigo’s shoulder from behind, as the freak laughed like a complete madman. Gusts of hot breath were blowing past his ears. Against his will, a hand skated across his stomach like a pale spider, all joints of long fingers and the slide of a calloused palm.

“ _Hey,_ ” Ichigo said, prying the hand off his abs. “I was fucking kidding!” He tried to ignore the voice in his head helpfully screaming that he was pressed backwards against naked Grimmjow, Grimmjow’s naked skin, naked naked naked, and tried to twist free without snapping the restraining arms. He didn’t want to actually injure him. Pausing a moment to contemplate the sheer absurdity of that unbidden thought, Ichigo hesitated just long enough for Grimmjow to pin him again—this time against his front.

“Bluff with me and you’ll lose. Every time.” Eyes like blue searchlights were almost dancing as he stared Ichigo directly in the face. Up close, the bone jaw was cracked into a feral smile, but he couldn’t see a hinge on it. Was it in two pieces, attached to his face separately? Squeezing his arm out of the circle he was caught in, Ichigo touched a fingertip to the edge of the lower jaw and pushed up. It closed with a quiet click of teeth. Gaze turning sharp, Grimmjow shook his head free.

“The fuck are you doing?”

“Just looking.”

“Just touching,” Grimmjow bit out. “Why aren’t you squealing anymore?”

“Oh—” Ichigo tried to shake himself free, but if anything, Grimmjow’s arms tightened. “I got distracted. C’mon, let go. Urahara’s probably jacking it to this whole scene over his cameras.”

“You touched my mask,” Grimmjow said resolutely, and didn’t let go. “Let him jack off for all I care. How’d you get from screaming to touching me?”

“I don’t—who cares?” Refusing to squirm, Ichigo just stood there, toes curling into soft sediment. Grimmjow’s hands weren’t touching him, just gripping his own opposite forearms now like a circle of lean muscle. “I just wondered how it was stuck on. The only times I’ve seen it this close is when I’ve tried to dice you with Zangetsu. Is—sorry.” He looked away, supremely awkward. “I didn’t know it was a thing.”

The arms surrounding Ichigo abruptly released, leaving him free to flounder lightly in the water. Neither of them moved; Ichigo mostly because he figured Grimmjow would. And Grimmjow…who the hell knew, when he was giving him that narrow-eyed look?

“Go on then.”

“What?”

“The mask. If it’s that interesting.”

“Maybe I don’t want to touch it anymore,” Ichigo lied. He absolutely did. Worse, Grimmjow’s sudden grin said he knew it. Curiosity killed the cat, Ichigo furiously told himself, as Grimmjow grabbed his hand from beneath the water and smacked it palm-first against the side of his face, right over the jawbone’s teeth. Ichigo’s fingers flexed and held on as the hand slipped away.

It was smooth, almost like polished ivory—like his own mask had been smooth. It didn’t have the rough craggy texture he’d have expected of something that looked so much like a bone. The teeth were sharp, delineated, and they really did part from upper and lower sets when Grimmjow moved his own mouth. In fact, pressing down on the lower jaw forced Grimmjow’s lips to part as well. Even stranger, Grimmjow allowed the prodding with silent acquiescence, though sharp blue eyes burned into him the entire time. Finally Ichigo let his fingertips trail away, satisfied with his examination—if more than a little embarrassed that he hadn’t simply denied his way out of the entire thing.

“Thought you shinigami were supposed to be repulsed by the broken mask.” There was no real inflection in Grimmjow’s tone. “Blasphemy, perversion of the natural order, all that.”

Ichigo gave him a flat look. “ _I’m_ a perversion of the natural order.”

“You’re some kind of somethin’, that’s for sure.” Slipping backwards through the water, Grimmjow returned to his previous position against the rocks. Pausing only a moment, Ichigo returned to his own. His fingers felt tingly.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means I’m—”

Whatever Grimmjow was saying was swallowed up with the booming instrumentals of a song that Ichigo hadn’t heard since his mother was still alive.

_‘Cause Iiiiiiii’ve had, the tiiiiiiime of my liiiiiiiiiiiiiife, no I never felt this way before…’_

The blaring lyrics weren’t completely pure; another voice was singing along with them, vaguely out of tune. To Ichigo’s horror, he knew exactly who was singing them, and getting closer. The faintly cornered look Grimmjow shot him said he recognised it, too. Why, why was it always when he was naked in the water?

“Hello, boys,” said a low, distinctly throaty feminine voice, just beyond the point of the rocks surrounding the spring. “Mind if I join you?”

Ichigo gave Grimmjow one desperate look. “ _Cero,_ ” he hissed.

But Grimmjow just leapt straight out of the water, eyes fixed and blank with a single animal directive: fucking run. Ichigo got an eyeful of wet muscles and lean legs, the wink of a hard buttcheek all he saw before sonido carried him away, sword and clothes completely left behind. Exhaling into bubbling water, Ichigo just sank down to his chin, not even bothering to bolt. Yoruichi was too fast and his ribs were still sore, anyway.

Trying not to follow the lyrics to an eighties dance movie and failing, Ichigo didn’t even have the presence of mind to flush when a long streak of bronzed skin and purple hair flashed into his peripheral vision. He’d seen her naked too many times to be unnerved at this point.

“He’s gone? Good.” Yoruichi slipped into the water slowly, arched back so her breasts pointed at the artificial horizon. Ichigo just frowned at the display, annoyed at the disruption more than anything. What had Grimmjow been trying to say? And where the hell was he now, stark naked in the artificial desert somewhere? “It’s been a while, Ichigo.”

“You know where I live,” he grunted. “Could have visited.”

“Really couldn’t,” she said, laughing and yanking the ribbon from her thick hair. “Isshin’s kidou barrier was a really specific punch in the pussy. Pun intended.”

“Couldn’t tell you about it,” Ichigo replied, looking away. “Haven’t asked him why he did it.” Honestly, he didn’t know how to. For all his dad played the clown and the boisterous protector of the family, the shinigami side of him remained something they’d silently agreed to leave behind. The kidou barrier over two streets was a direct contravention of that agreement. On the surface, it just seemed like a father’s attempt to give his son a safe harbour from the shitstorm that had been the last five years. No more plots, no more invitations, no more attacks. No more manipulations.

No more shinigami.

“You know why he did it.” Yoruichi’s golden eyes were calm and direct, blaming him for nothing. “Same reason you gave it all up for a while. But you stayed inside it too long. We thought an arrancar might slip past the wall, with a bit of help.”

“Grimmjow know you used him like this?” Ichigo spat suddenly, hating that he’d receive an honest answer.

“Only afterwards. He’s got good instincts, you know. Sharp, like claws and teeth. He only sought you out because it was the first thought in his head after we let him out of here in that gigai.” Slipping through the water like a knife, Yoruichi only stopped when she was two feet in front of Ichigo. “If he’s the price of getting you back in the world, back in your skin, Kisuke will keep him til the end of days.”

“Use him, you mean.”

“Yes. For as long as you’re attached to him.”

“Fuck you.” Furious, feeling a branding cold in his chest, Ichigo planted palms on her shoulders and shoved her clean across the hot spring. “They don’t want me, Yoruichi. Leave him alone.”

“Soul society already has eyes on Grimmjow. You think they’ll stop there? He’s an arrancar out of Hueco Mundo. If they weren’t trying to gauge our interest in him, he’d be a rug by now. Seeing you, it’s the same thing. He’s got allies, they think. Friends. But without a leash around his neck, they’re not going to let him live.” Yoruichi approached again, eyes bright and intense. “You like him, Ichigo. We used him to get to you, but he’s good for us too. Help Kisuke.”

Ichigo stared at her helplessly, shaking his head. Didn’t she get it at all?

“Grimmjow doesn’t need saving. Soul Society does if they try it, because you don’t use me, and discard me, and then think for a second you get to pick and choose what mask you accept so long as it fights on your side. He’ll fight.” Pushing forward until they were chest to chest, eye to eye, he summoned every clear and honest thought he had on the entire topic and came up with one thing to say. “And so will I.”

Yoruichi broke into a ferocious smile.

“Then welcome back into the fray, Kurosaki Ichigo. We’ve got work for you.”


	6. Chapter 6

“You just…left me there. That was a shit act, Grimmjow. I’ve still got her…her boob print on my chest.”

“You’re wasted to hell, Kurosaki. Quit livin’ in the past.”

“It was three days ago!”

Grimmjow’s only reply to that was to take a long pull of his beer—and burp so loudly he startled a tired cluster of regulars ordering at the bar. They’d taken one of the booths this time, which made them less of an attraction on display. Grimmjow’s blue hair always drew weird glances. Ichigo’s own too, come to think. But they had been blessed with angry punk faces, so after that first night they actually hadn’t been in any fights since. Stretching his legs out beneath the table, he kicked Grimmjow in the ankle and took a sip of his…berry something. Martini? Whatever it was, the barman kept making them for him, and for whatever reason Ichigo didn’t stop him. Grimmjow just shot him a shitty glance across the table.

“What?”

“Did Urahara and Yoruichi tell you about the whole sordid plan?”

“That I was your bait? Figured it out on my own ages ago.” Trailing his fingers through the condensation gathering on his beer, Grimmjow didn’t even look mad. Ichigo, on the other hand, found the entire damn campaign of manipulation deeply insulting.

“Yeah that you were my bait, and I just,” he shrugged jerkily, “I totally fell for you. Thought I was _smart_ _,_ Grimmjow.”

“It’s my animal magnetism. Don’t feel bad.”

“Shut up. I mean it though.” Sipping from his glass, Ichigo swiped the bright remains off his lip with his tongue. Grimmjow was giving him a look, so he slid the fruity mess across to him. “Why don’t you even look worried about Soul Society coming down on you like…assholes?” There just really wasn’t any good simile for them.

Maintaining eye contact, Grimmjow took the glass and spun it slightly, finishing the entire thing off in a huge gulp. Ichigo took the glass back to eat the berries on the bottom. He was on his third when he realised Grimmjow had drank straight from the same place his mouth had been. Reluctantly putting it down to a power move, Ichigo frowned over at him.

Grimmjow was shrugging. “I don’t think Soul Society are a problem. Urahara’s been dancing with them for years.” Idly, he caught the label on his beer with the edge of a fingernail. “What interests me is what they want with Hueco Mundo.”

“Soul Society?”

“Urahara,” Grimmjow said heavily. “Quit obsessing about the damn shinigami. They dumped you like hot garbage.” At Ichigo’s open, startled look, he shook his head. “It was their loss. Fuck ‘em.” Casting his eye at the now-empty bar, Grimmjow grabbed Ichigo’s wallet from the table and headed to get them another drink. Blue hair or not, he had the casual looseness about his shoulders that said he belonged wherever the hell he wanted to. Ichigo helplessly envied it.

 _Their loss._ It was as close to a consolation as Ichigo ever thought he’d hear from someone like Grimmjow. It was still more than anyone else had ever told him. The thought struck hard.

The memories of Grimmjow wanting to gut him like a fish were old now, but the feral destructive energy crackling inside him was still there. Ichigo still saw it during their matches, and buried behind his eyes when they were simply sitting around, like they were just then. It was all still there, but…whatever match used to strike against it in the past had changed. Ichigo wasn’t even sure anymore that Grimmjow really did want to kill him one day, to end it and declare himself king. Instead, they spent long, lazy evenings drinking and talking about nothing in particular, speculating on the shadowy intentions of people like Urahara Kisuke. Their fights were long, rough and didn’t end until their energy was spent, but afterwards they laughed tiredly and helped each other up.

But Grimmjow didn’t think they’d ever be friends. What did he think they’d be?

Ichigo was mulling it over, more confused than he’d been before when the drinks thudded down on the table in front of him. Grimmjow was biting down on the worn leather of Ichigo’s wallet, carrying it in his mouth while his hands were full. Taking it from him as he bent, Ichigo studied the indentations his teeth left behind. Sharp canines, he noted. Animal magnetism. He slid it back into his pocket.

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna be a sad bastard for the rest of the night.” Grimmjow all but threw himself down into his side of the booth. “I just loaded up the jukebox.”

Ichigo groaned. “As if I don’t get enough of Urahara’s greatest hits when we fight.”

“I can’t help it this thing is twenty years old. Work with what you got, Kurosaki.”

“Have standards,” Ichigo countered.

“Hueco Mundo has no music.”

“Oh.”

“Or food.”

“Yeah.”

“Now there’s no alcohol either.”

“Okay, I get it,” Ichigo said, on the defensive and irritable about it. “But you’re not in Hueco Mundo anymore.”

Grimmjow’s eyes slid to one side. “Maybe not for long.” A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw, beneath where his broken mask would sit, were he not in his gigai.

Ichigo felt a horrible lurch in his chest. “What? You’re leaving? I thought—” What? What did he think? That a fight and a drink each week was some kind of way to live? “Urahara and Yoruichi want you around, though. If it’s Soul Society, they can hide you.”

Grimmjow’s eyes blazed. “When the fuck have I ever hidden from a fight?”

“Then—”

“Forget it.” Grabbing his beer in an angry fist, Grimmjow brought it to his lips and near downed half of it in one gulp. The sneer that came away from the bottle’s rim said the violence gathering in his shoulders and hands wasn’t going to be harmless. “Hide? Me? I’ll string em up by their insides, I’ll—”

Ichigo grabbed the beer he’d slammed back on the table and took a punishing slug of it, more for the distraction than anything. Impossibly, it worked: Grimmjow went still and silent as he watched Ichigo drink from his own bottle, eyes following the tip of liquid where it touched his mouth, and the slow gather of muscle in his throat as he swallowed it down. Tearing his eyes away, Grimmjow’s alarmed gaze darted for anything else in the bar.

“You’re no coward, Grimmjow. I know it better than anyone.” Feeling the carbonated pressure gather in his chest, Ichigo tried not to burp. It mostly worked. “But you’ve enjoyed it here. Why the hell do you want to leave?” He pushed the bottle back across the old laminated table, about a quarter remaining. Grimmjow took it, but didn’t drink.

“Something Kisuke said,” he admitted finally, brows drawing together. “Harribel isn’t cooperating. They want access to Hueco Mundo, I think. Mining the spirit particles. There’s so much of it in places it crystallises. The lower hollow feed on the deposits like a supplement to keep ‘em going when they can’t find souls.”

Access to Hueco Mundo meant a garganta to open the way, Ichigo realised. Something Grimmjow could easily provide at a moment’s notice. But Harribel was ruling over a mostly dead kingdom after everything that had gone down. The other arrancar were all but wiped out, so the place had to be running wild. Surely Urahara could just get Grimmjow to open the way and waltz right in to steal the crystals.

Unless he couldn’t.

“I’m too drunk for this,” Ichigo decided, and grabbed his own drink. This one was in a martini glass as well, but it was dark brown and smelled like coffee. “What happened to the berries?”

“I don’t need to see you eating those.”

“Fruit’s good for you.”

“Take your word for it.”

Unsettled by where the conversation had ended, upset and knowing he couldn’t really voice it, Ichigo nursed his drink longer than usual, trying to keep his rioting thoughts from reflecting on his face. If Grimmjow left, Ichigo felt like he’d gouge out with him a suddenly huge, glittering piece of his life. But if Yoruichi had wanted Ichigo dragged out of his shell, out of the barrier—

_We used him to get to you, but he’s good for us too._

Ichigo thought _he’d_ been the centre of their plan.

But what if he’d only been the dangling lure to make Grimmjow obey them?

“I feel sick,” Ichigo announced, shooting to his feet so fast the world rippled in the edges of his vision. Grimmjow blinked for an instant, dumb with surprise, and Ichigo used the moment to get out the door and into the cool night air. The alleyway beside the bar smelled like stagnant water and old oil. Staggering a little, he caught himself and pushed forward, ignoring the way the pavement seemed to bounce back under his feet. Okay, he was a little drunk. He usually was after their benders.

“Where the hell are you going?” a familiar voice called, confused and more aggressive for it.

“Home,” Ichigo grated. The exact same place Grimmjow was heading back to, if Urahara and Yoruichi got their way, and they almost always did. “I didn’t eat enough or something. See you.”

“What—don’t fucking talk with your back to me!” The offence in the words was all the forewarning he had before a hand slammed down on his shoulder, strong with the abrupt rush of reiatsu thrumming through it. The gigai sensed a fight coming with another spiritually aware being. Well, Ichigo wasn’t about to indulge. He let himself be swung around hard, shoved back against the lukewarm glass of an old bakery on the other side of the alley. “The fuck’s wrong with you?”

"Hot garbage," Ichigo said furiously, shoving him away. “That’s what. I’m not waiting around again to be tossed away like a piece of shit once I’m not useful anymore. So fuck Urahara, and fuck Yoruichi, and fuck you _,_ Grimmjow. I don’t want any damn part in this. Have fun in Hueco Mundo. Get strong enough to challenge Harribel on your own.” Turning his shoulder like a shield, Ichigo ignored the shocked flash of Grimmjow’s eyes in the streetlights and stalked away, trying to keep as steady as he could manage.

Challenge Harribel. The thought had only hit him while he’d been yelling, but really, what else could it be? Urahara was a kingmaker. He primed people for his own purposes and then set them loose with the idea they were totally in control of their own fate, when really they were just following the subtle plan. Ichigo knew it better than most, after Rukia and the Hougyoku. Oh, their intentions were generally good, but in their pursuit of Good a lot of other things were discarded along the way. They were, after all, born and bred to be Soul Society’s finest. Let Grimmjow be their newest project if he wanted.

“What the fuck’s the point if you’re not there?”

Ichigo’s feet stopped moving. In fact, everything stopped moving, except for the tremble of lights and shadow caught in the sting of his eyes. He was just so _sick_ of it all. He couldn’t bring himself to turn around.

“You’ll figure something out. Go rule Hueco Mundo like they want you to.” Ichigo swallowed hard. “Go be the king.”

“No. Fuck the king. Fuck the desert, and fuck you—”

“What do you want, you asshole?” Ichigo shouted, spinning unsteadily on his heel. Grimmjow was wreathed in shadow, but the glint of his teeth was still visible. That, and his blazing gaslight eyes. “Power? Strength? Allies? You’ve got them all! You don’t need me. They just set me up like a fucking practice dummy, like some—some damn idiot with more reiatsu than brains. I’m the pawn, you dumbass."

Grimmjow’s shoulders were heaving in the half-light. His hands were clenching in and out of fists, like he didn’t know if he wanted to attack or not. Ichigo had always kind of figured that if Grimmjow’s gigai was in range of him it changed the rules, like maybe it wouldn’t detonate like it had started to that day. Proximity to Ichigo made it strong, tall, like something meeting the sun. But just then, Grimmjow looked almost small. Ichigo turned away.

The politics of the dead, he thought tiredly. He was never getting involved again.

“Neither of us is the king if Urahara’s holding the reins.” Grimmjow’s voice was quenched into something tight. “So let’s cut ‘em.” Ichigo barely halted his stride.

“Cut them yourself.”

“Will if I have to.”

“Good.”

Heading up the street again, Ichigo jammed his hands in his pockets and bitterly tried to forget the entire damn night. He’d gotten his hopes up. Again. But Hueco Mundo, or Soul Society or even just Karakura—he always ended up the butt of some enormous cosmic shitfest. When the hands slammed down on his shoulders a second time, when Grimmjow forced him back against damp bricks and breathed hot and hard into his face, Ichigo just wore it. Honestly, he was too damn drunk and tired for anything else. Let him talk, he thought, glaring up into Grimmjow’s shadowed face.

And Grimmjow did talk. “If it’s the choice between owning Hueco Mundo or getting rid of that fucking look on your face, Harribel can keep it,” he snarled, teeth bared and reiatsu limning the edges of his silhouette like a pale blue halo. “You’re my goal, you ginger piece of shit. Think Urahara can make me forget that? Think anything can? I swapped sides for you, I fought those assholes in Soul Society so I could get to you. You’re _fucked_ _,_ Kurosaki Ichigo. There’s not a single damn corner of existence I won’t hunt you down to.”

Ichigo forced himself upright under the onslaught, straight and proud against the wall. He didn’t take his eyes off Grimmjow for a second.

“You’ve already got me right here,” Ichigo said. Planting his hands against Grimmjow’s chest, he didn’t quite push him away. “What is it you want to do?”

Grimmjow just stared him down with shadowed eyes, unreadable without the streetlamps pouring down. Fingers clenched down hard on Ichigo’s shoulders, pressing muscle into bone. Under Ichigo’s palms, an artificial heart was pounding. Ichigo braced himself for a blow—

 

 

 

—but a mouth slammed against his, claiming hard and hungry like it was pressing straight through his arguments by sheer force alone. Ichigo felt the back of his head hit the bricks; not hard, but enough to remind him yes, he was awake and conscious and Grimmjow’s mouth really was pressed wet and burning against his own. With a split second to half-kill him or relax, Ichigo felt a thumb press at the base of his jaw and remembered his own snapping sharp teeth shut, and inhaled hard the scent of soap and shampoo and the hard burn of alcohol. His mouth opened like surrendering gates and pressed forward into the slide of a warm tongue over his own. Thin fingers clenched like vice grips for an instant, relaxing on his shoulders a second later.

It was horrible, Ichigo thought between the grip of fingers and the hard exhale of breath, just how unfamiliar and welcome that onslaught was, knowing nobody had kissed him in forever. But damn, it filled something he didn’t know he’d been missing that entire time. It took almost nothing to return the favour, following the rough velvet of a tongue back into slick places he’d never attempt while sober. It didn’t feel like a battle. If anything, it felt like—

Breaking away with a turn of his head countless moments later, Ichigo breathed hard into the humid summer air. Lips brushed up the curve of his exposed jawline, seemingly still searching. Grimmjow was breathing like a drowning thing finally tasting air, but he still caught the tendons of Ichigo’s throat with his mouth.

“I was trying to let you go, moron,” Ichigo rasped, angling his neck. “You could handle Harribel at this point.”

“If I can’t fuckin’ beat you,” Grimmjow rumbled against his throat, “I’m sure as shit not ruling that place.”

“Wanna fight it out?” Ichigo said, even as he let Grimmjow jam his nose into the juncture of his shoulder and neck, dragging it up like he was drinking something in.

“No. I want to fuck Urahara over and give him the kind of shit he’s been giving me this last year.”

It took a few moments for Ichigo to process that, his nerves all lit up with sensation and adrenaline, but it came through eventually. A year was too long, far too long.

“You only visited me these last two months.”

“I had to earn it.” Grimmjow’s tone wasn’t complimentary. “Ten months service before he’d give me the gigai.”

“And you worked just so—”

“Shut up.”

Breathing quietly into the humid space between their mouths, alive with it, Ichigo knew he wasn’t drunk enough to hide from what had just happened. Hell, he could still taste Grimmjow in his mouth like a wash of crackling reiatsu, hot and electric with potential. Was that what it was like? Or was it just arrancar? Was it just Grimmjow?

“You want to,” Ichigo swallowed with a little difficulty, “want to start a war for Hueco Mundo?”

The hands pressing down on Ichigo’s shoulders and neck eased up suddenly, slipping away. The heat at his front vanished as Grimmjow pulled away three paces to eye him with edgy contemplation.

“It’s nothin’ to me, Kurosaki. But…” Leaning in slightly, the streetlight hit Grimmjow’s eyes and illuminated them like blue torches, lashed dark and narrow with hungry intention. The green estigma smeared beneath the corners of his lower eyelids was vivid. “I say we fuck them all up anyway, and see how they all piss themselves after.”

“Sick of being used,” Ichigo murmured, pressed against hard brick and wondering if it was the only thing holding him up. The stars bore down on him hard, glittering silver in their dark velvet blanket. He wondered if Soul Society stared half as hard. They should. “I’m in if you are.”

Grimmjow just smiled his wolf-teeth smile: victorious and hungry.

“Then leftovers unite.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

Ichigo woke up in the morning to a raging headache and a dry mouth, knowing four utterly irrefutable truths despite the oily clouds sliding about in his head.

One: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez had kissed him.

Two: Ichigo had kissed him back.

Three: They’d decided to double-cross Urahara…somehow?

Four: Ichigo had the kind of hangover that was usually reserved for people who’d committed terrible sins. That made him think about number two all over again.

Pulling his face out of his pillow—and the damn thing still had the fading scent of Grimmjow’s generic hard soap and the weird foresty funk he carried with him—Ichigo blinked myopically at the rungs of his bedhead and took stock of his health and all-round position in life. Maybe he really hadn’t had enough to eat before that round of drinking. His stomach churned belligerently, but mostly he was just thirsty. It felt like someone had stuffed a rag down the back of his throat and left it there all night.

A quick glance at his alarm clock said it was just before eight. There was a bright spear of light piercing through the curtains, golden and hot against his legs through the blanket. Reaching back with a grumbling yawn, Ichigo twitched the fabric back into a seamless wall of dim blue light. Things like sunrise could come later. Much later. Or not at all, really. But a shower definitely had to happen in the immediate future. A shower, toothpaste, some fresh clothes and then an enormous faceplant back into the rumpled nest of his bed sounded like heaven. Maybe he could even repress the whole Grimmjow thing a while longer.

Unlikely, Ichigo thought with reluctant embarrassment, shoving his blankets off and staggering for his wardrobe. A soft white t-shirt and worn sweatpants that were slightly too loose were grabbed with a clumsy hand as he headed for the bathroom like a zombie. If he had to feel like shit today he could at least be as comfortable as possible while doing it.

Ichigo yawned his way through shaving and a teeth-brushing session that almost stripped his mouth bare, followed by a shower so scalding and high-pressured it felt like it had blasted some of the hair off his head. Choosing blindly between two types of shower gel he hesitated at Yuzu’s bottle of vanilla dream whipped lather. What the hell; vanilla had no gender. He dumped an enormous squeeze of it onto his sponge and went to town on soaping up. Yuzu wouldn’t care, probably. She had four more.

Finally, pink-cheeked from the heat, damp-haired and feeling slightly less like he wanted to die, Ichigo slugged a glass of water and took some aspirin, shuffling back toward his room with full intentions to sleep the rest of the day.

Except he couldn’t, because there was an enormous lanky bastard sprawled in his bed, chest rumbling faintly with a low snore. Ichigo braced himself against the doorframe and gaped in mournful dismay, mostly over his nap fantasy being yanked out of his reaching hands.

Grimmjow was barefoot and belly-down on his bed, fully dressed and gripping Ichigo’s favourite pillow like a buoy in a sea of blankets. The side of his face that wasn’t burrowed into the pillow was frowning, and thoroughly deep in sleep. He was turned toward the window, his sharp brows drawn into a scowl. An angry sleeper. Somehow, Ichigo couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised about that. Creeping forward to stare unhappily, closely, he figured if Grimmjow had made it into his house someone had let him in. Who would let in a grouchy, abrasive blue-haired punk dressed all in black? Probably the same type of person who’d let him sleep undisturbed in their bed, a voice helpfully murmured, somewhere down the back of Ichigo’s subconscious where he couldn’t flatten it.

Grimmjow asleep didn’t elicit the cringing awkwardness Ichigo expected when he was awake and looking at him. Mostly he just looked like an asshole taking up all the mattress room on his bed, leaving none for him. Not that he was thinking of getting in beside him…just, how did anyone that gangly take up so much space? Everything he did was a loose, casual sprawl. Ichigo had never looked that comfortable in his entire life.

It also wasn’t the first time he’d slept in that bed, but Ichigo hadn’t given it any thought at the time. The night of the gigai explosion Grimmjow had come back to the house eventually, chasing him through the storm. But instead of sleeping in Ichigo’s bed, he’d spent six hours lying awake lazily cracking his own knuckles one by one, staring at the ceiling while Ichigo considered murdering him from the futon on the floor. Arrancar didn’t need a lot of sleep, as it turned out. Ichigo supposed he should be grateful he even tried to fake it. Looking at him in that moment, it seemed like either Grimmjow had held out sleeplessly for too long, or maybe the gigai’s burn on his reiryoku meant he needed the rest. Hell, maybe it was just a hangover too.

Eventually leaving Grimmjow to his violent dreams, Ichigo trudged out of his room and headed for the kitchen. The scent of sizzling bacon coming from that direction made him simultaneously want to throw up and ask for a plate.

“Ichi! Your friend is here for breakfast again,” Yuzu said from the kitchen, carefully pouring batter into a frying pan. Did she ever leave the kitchen? “Dad let him in to go find you.” Isshin looked up over his newspaper and gave Ichigo a two-finger salute. He liked the personals, often reading out the psychic advertisements offering to get in touch with the dead like it was something hilarious. Since he’d gotten his shinigami powers back, that kind of thing had started to really get under his skin. Ichigo wondered if he missed the job, but the wall he needed to climb over to have those conversations was just too high to attempt yet. Besides, his father was a doctor in an emergency clinic. Helping people didn’t come more easily than that.

“If he’s here for breakfast, why is he asleep in my bed?” Ichigo grumbled, pulling out the chair to the right of the table head, playing a half-hearted game of footsie with his father until he nailed him right in the ankle. Isshin scratched his stubble, letting the newspaper sag down into a fold so he could give Ichigo a serious look.

“It’s been a while since you had any friends over.”

“Some of them couldn’t find their way in,” Ichigo said pointedly, aligning his placemat with the edge of the table.

“Those aren’t friends.”

“And you think Grimmjow is?” He didn’t mean for it to come out like a challenge—at least, not because he disagreed. Isshin just shrugged.

“I’ve seen worse. Besides, nobody else has lit a fire under your ass like that since Rukia was staying here.”

“He’s also a really good eater,” Yuzu called, flipping pancakes like she was the newest contestant on Masterchef. “He said he wanted the maple butter bacon pancakes!”

Ichigo tried not to wince. “Is that what we’re eating?” he muttered to his father, who gave him an intense glare.

“Keep your mouth shut. Yuzu’s been feeding me rice and vegetables for the last month. I’d suck on a pig’s teat for an ounce of fat right now.”

“Dad.”

“I mean it, Ichigo. Don’t test me.”

Feeling like he should cover his nipples, Ichigo decided not to pursue that line of conversation. His father was a strange beast when he was dieting, and Yuzu had been relentless since Karin had left. Ichigo had no real complaints either way when it came to meals, since his sister was basically a dietitian with her measurements of nutrients versus calories. She’d even introduced more meat into his meals recently, sensing his fights with Grimmjow each week were thinning him out too much.

Dozing with half-lidded eyes while he waited for breakfast, Ichigo listened to the soft crackle of newspaper as his father read and Yuzu’s gentle humming as she organised her breakfast routine. The boiling pit in his disgruntled stomach slowly settled into something a little more curious, as the scent from the kitchen turned salty-sweet and rich with the heat of rising flour and buttery milk.

“Grimmjow is an arrancar.” Ichigo said it without hesitation, just knowing he needed to say it. His eyes didn’t open.

“No kidding,” Isshin replied. “I know a thing or two about gigai, Ichigo.”

“I know you do. I just—”

“We take our companions where we find them, not because of what they might be.” Casting warm brown eyes over his son, Isshin’s mouth curved into a grin. “Quincy, for instance.”

“I haven’t seen Ishida in a year.”

Isshin’s look was long. “You really are hung over, aren’t you? Yuzu! Get Ichigo and his friend a gulping glass each of that egg mess with the hot sauce.”

“Two prairie oysters, coming up!”

“Grimmjow’s asleep in my bed,” Ichigo said, sounding more upset by it than he intended to. “He won’t drink it.”

“But breakfast is almost ready!” Yuzu sounded genuinely distressed, which always triggered Isshin’s paternal instincts. He was out of his chair in moments, shoulders broad and ready to carry the weight of the world. Ichigo, entirely unable to function like a human being, decided he was happy to let it play out.

“I’ll see to the guest,” Isshin said, like he was going to war. The fact he was wearing heart-patterned drawstring pyjama pants and a ragged sleeveless t-shirt undermined it a little though. “Ichigo, mind the table placements.”

“Uh.”

“Good boy.”

Ichigo sat breathing for a few seconds after his father had left the room before he looked up and saw Yuzu giving him the Look.

“Go after him, dummy! You know that Dad’ll kick him in the head!”

That…was really true. And Grimmjow was completely hobbled in that gigai almost to the point of mere fingerprints leaving bruises. Urahara had pretty much seen to that. Pushing away from the table, he left Yuzu to crack eggs into glasses, tomato juice and hot sauce at the ready, and ran toward the hallway leading up to his bedroom. Two huge leaps upstairs that left his head jangling with dizziness later, Ichigo hit his own bedroom door just to hear Isshin call out to Grimmjow.

" _Breakfast time, demon!!_ " A leg was already hitched high over the sleeping arrancar to slam down on Grimmjow’s gigai, which looked as soft and vulnerable as stretched dough to Ichigo’s horrified eyes.

“Fuck,” Grimmjow muttered without turning, and flailed an arm out to shoo the offending noise away.

Ichigo wouldn’t mark too much down in the annals of time, but seeing Grimmjow’s hand fly out in blind instinct to sack-whack his father would honestly be burned into his memories for decades to come.

" _Hrnk!_ " Isshin cried manfully and crumpled like a wet paper bag, clutching his groin like it was about to go flying across the room. Grimmjow just went limp again, not even turning in Isshin’s direction during the small exchange. He didn’t even look like he’d been fully conscious for it.

Ichigo didn’t really laugh a whole lot but he came extremely close to absolutely losing his shit in that moment, probably still a little bit drunk and mostly wondering why the hell that particular finishing move had never occurred to him, not in all his years of fighting Isshin over even the smallest slights. And Grimmjow had just—done it, entirely by accident and still burrowed peacefully in Ichigo’s most comfortable pillow.

Grimmjow eventually awoke to that exact scene: grumbling nonsense at the laughter, pushing up from the bed to watching with a clearing gaze as Ichigo leaned against the doorframe, wiping moisture from the corners of his eyes. Of all the people who had ever needed Ichigo’s help, Grimmjow certainly wasn’t counted among them. Trying not to make any embarrassing noises, Ichigo just shook his head at his sleepy rival, stepping aside as Isshin limped out of the room, face florid with pain and with hardly a glance back in their direction. The fact he didn’t even comment was hard testimony to his defeat.

“I got twenty minutes sleep, what the fuck,” Grimmjow grumbled moments later, turning over in Ichigo’s bed and grabbing the blanket’s edge with proprietary movements. Jamming the heel of his palms into his eyes, he yawned hugely. “Feel like I’ve been bulldozed by Yammy.”

“So you thought you’d just invite yourself in for a nap in my bed,” Ichigo said, straying forward as Grimmjow swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there in dazed lethargy, forearms resting on his thighs. The jaw-cracking yawn and slightly rumpled hair were really doing wonders for the awkwardness Ichigo was fully expecting to feel. “I thought you didn’t even need sleep.”

“It’s the gigai burning up all my energy to keep me weak. I get…” another yawn, “about two days in it before it knocks me out. Can’t fuckin’ sleep at the shop. Jinta keeps bursting in at dawn to club me to death with his bat.”

Well, that explained his reflexes in stopping Isshin. Feeling vaguely sorry for Grimmjow, Ichigo felt the last of his annoyance evaporate, the corner of his mouth ticking up slightly. Seeing it, Grimmjow gave him a narrow, considering look from his hunched over position.

“Gotta make decisions on last night’s big plan, too.” His head tilted slightly. “Unless you’re too chickenshit.”

Ichigo frowned, purposely closing the gap until he stood right at Grimmjow’s bent knees. Through one overlong wave of blue hair that fell across his eye, Grimmjow watched him warily. He didn’t lift his chin or brush it away. Ichigo’s fingertips twitched before he could remember what he wanted to say.

“I don’t want Urahara—or Soul Society—getting their hands on Hueco Mundo’s resources. Harribel’s not an idiot; if she’s stopping them it’s because she knows something we don’t. Plus you said the lesser hollow feed on that spirit crystal stuff—”

“What’s that smell?” Grimmjow said suddenly, his gaze sharpening further. Before Ichigo could so much as choke on his own spit, hands reached around him to grab the back of his thighs, tugging him forward into the cradle of Grimmjow’s legs. But worst of all was the face that buried itself in Ichigo’s abdomen, inhaling deeply. “You smell like  _sugar._ " The words were almost reverent.

Yuzu’s fucking shower gel, Ichigo thought in embarrassed horror, caught between punching Grimmjow in the top of the head or punching himself to escape the entire scene he was now part of. For his part, Grimmjow seemed to be almost rumbling with enjoyment, following the scent around the flat muscles of Ichigo’s stomach.

“Get off me,” Ichigo grunted, grabbing a big hank of Grimmjow’s hair and yanking his head back. Bad idea. Grimmjow’s pupils were blown black with interest under narrowed eyelids, fixed on him with animal intensity. Ichigo had the sudden impression that the hair pulling had really, really not helped. He let go in a hurry. “It’s just soap.”

Fingers tightened on Ichigo’s thighs. “Your whole fuckin’ body smells like this?” The words were pushed into Ichigo’s stomach, hot with the exhalation of his breath. Ichigo realised Grimmjow was literally huffing his skin like a kid with a pot of glue—then also realised he was standing there feeling Grimmjow’s lips moving on his stomach, hands on his thighs and his mind promptly fractured into about five different scenarios.

“Breakfast,” Ichigo said mechanically, trying not to think at all. “Breakfast is ready.”

“Fuck yes,” Grimmjow said, pulling his face away and letting go of Ichigo in one movement. “I’m starving. Is the pigtail midget making the pancakes I told her to?” Unfolding almost crane-like, Grimmjow got to his feet and headed for the door.

“Yeah,” Ichigo replied, rubbing his stomach surreptitiously. He was absolutely not in any way disappointed or annoyed that he’d been shoved aside for food. “My dad is downstairs too though, so don’t stab me this time.”

“No promises.” The reply was almost cheerful. Hands jammed in his pockets, Grimmjow vanished out into the hall.

The moment he was gone Ichigo yanked up his t-shirt and stared at his stomach, half-expecting a hickey. There was nothing, just his abs kind of twitching from the aftershock of a sensation overload. Stomach, huh. Even he hadn’t known about that one. Walking out into the hallway, Ichigo gave the bathroom door a furtive glance, then shook it off as a terrible idea. Only perverts were turned on by the kind of shit Grimmjow had just pulled, and Ichigo was absolutely not a pervert. Squaring his shoulders, he headed down the hall with renewed purpose.

Hueco Mundo was at the centre of Grimmjow’s visit. Not the other stuff that had happened the night before.

That was completely normal. Totally fine.

Ichigo stomped down the stairs.

* * *

 

“Well, you passed the first test,” Isshin was saying, pointing at Grimmjow with his fork. “Anyone who can take me down in one hit is cleared to spend time with my son. You have my blessing.”

“Whatever,” Grimmjow said, barely looking up from his plate. Maple butter was melting off the edge of one golden-brown pancake, pooling in a small scattering of crispy bacon pieces. Ichigo rolled his eyes at the rapturous expression on his face and resumed stabbing at his own food. At least Yuzu had left him with just a pot of maple syrup to dole out himself so he didn’t have to partake in the whole butter-syrup-bacon monstrosity. Isshin and Grimmjow were demolishing it all, anyway.

Yuzu, who was watching Grimmjow intently, her small face almost glowing with approval. It was horrible.

“Just because someone eats your cooking doesn’t make them a good person,” Ichigo told her, with all the gravity an older brother should possess when imparting wisdom. “You need more qualifiers when deciding to like people or not.”

“He tries to kill you every week and _you_  still like him.” Yuzu said. “Don’t be hypocritical!”

“She has a point,” Isshin weighed in. “Get your head out of your ass, Ichigo.”

“I don’t _like_  him.” Pausing over a perfectly dissected wedge of sodden pancake, Grimmjow snorted at him. Ichigo’s face was hot. Three incredulous faces looked back at him. “I don’t have to take this from you people.”

“Yes you do,” Isshin said. “Embarrassing my children keeps me young.”

“Being a shinigami keeps you young,” Ichigo said flatly. Isshin just preened a little, making Yuzu laugh.

Grimmjow dropped his fork.

“Is everyone a fucking shinigami?” He actually sounded betrayed. He stared at Yuzu calculatingly, but she just sighed.

“I can barely even see ghosts. Dad says Karin sucked all the spiritual ability out of me in the womb.”

“Like a parasite,” Isshin agreed. “The child was evil, and that’s why we had to kill her.”

“A terrible shame, really,” Yuzu tsked. “The bloodstains were so hard to soak out.”

Grimmjow’s expression cleared into something approaching respect. Ichigo rolled his eyes.

“Karin is studying abroad.”

“That’s boring.” And back to eating.

After breakfast was finished—a task somewhat delayed by Grimmjow taking seconds  _and_  thirds—and the dishes were washed and packed away, Isshin vanished into the clinic to get his day started. Yuzu didn’t stick around too long either, claiming it was market day and buying fresh produce was a cutthroat business. Ichigo just suspected she was going to stop past Urahara’s and politely flirt some cheap mochi out of Jinta.

Finally the house was silent except for the tick of the wall clock in the kitchen, and the faint drone of the news on the old radio sitting on the windowsill. Grimmjow burped into that peaceful silence, scratching his stomach contentedly.

“You know how you said I couldn’t stay here—”

“Answer’s still no.”

“Fuck.”

Ichigo tried not to smile. “Come on, if we’re going to talk through this Hueco Mundo stuff we might as well crash on the sofa. I’m still kind of hung over.” He didn’t wait for a reply, heading toward the living room and their sagging, comfortably worn sofa that would embrace him like an old friend. Maybe Grimmjow wouldn’t mind if he had one small nap, maybe just twenty minutes? Ten? Except of course he’d mind. He wanted to talk about _plans_.

The silence really had been kind of a red flag, Ichigo thought as long arms suddenly crossed his chest, grabbing him from behind in a near mirror of the exact hold Grimmjow had gotten him in at the hot springs. Except this time Grimmjow was shoving his entire face into Ichigo’s neck, breathing deeply. That damn soap. Ichigo didn’t know whether to throw it in the garbage or buy ten more bottles.

“Why are you like this?” Ichigo muttered in defeat, handily pinned and not opposed enough to fight his way out. Grimmjow just laughed a hot gust of air into the humid space he’d claimed for himself—and licked a long stripe up the tendon standing out on Ichigo’s throat. Okay and _that_  was definitely not conducive to their plans for, for talking and thinking and where was Grimmjow’s hand going, exactly?

Ichigo swallowed as nimble fingertips skimmed aside the hem of his t-shirt and slid up to splay across his stomach. Distantly, he noted it was almost in the same place Grimmjow’s hollow hole would be. Teeth clamped on Ichigo’s neck.

“Ow! That’d better not bruise.” Very studiously, Ichigo committed himself to being responsible and adult-like with his father in the clinic exactly one wall away. “C’mon, I thought you wanted to—”

“What’s the matter,” Grimmjow panted against Ichigo’s ear. “You were kissin’ me like your life depended on it last night. You change your mind?”

“No,” Ichigo said on reflex, completely contrary. “But I’m not on board with your weird soap fetish. My sister uses that stuff.”

There was a long beat of still silence.

“I think my dick just fell off,” Grimmjow announced, and let Ichigo break free. “Fine. Let’s work on Operation: Fuck Urahara—”

Ichigo didn’t kiss many people. There just didn’t seem any point, really, and beyond a few experimental schoolyard pecks he’d generally been content to let things lie. Except then Grimmjow had to go ahead and half-devour him the night before, and again right there in the living room, with hungry hands and teeth. Suddenly the whole concept of kissing was not only back on the table, but the only thing Ichigo could honestly say he wanted to do in that exact moment. So he did. He reached up, clamped a hand in Grimmjow’s ridiculous hair and dragged his mouth down to press urgently to his.

Impossibly, Grimmjow’s mouth was soft with surprise. The punishing pressure he’d expected was instead warm and yielding, giving Ichigo a hard thrill at the sudden control he had. Then Grimmjow sucked in a sharp breath through his nose and hauled Ichigo against him, a syrup-sweet mouth opening greedily to allow him in. It all went to breathless, biting, grabby hell after that for a while, and not all on Grimmjow’s side, either. Because the hair-pulling _was_  a thing after all, and Ichigo soon realised he could get Grimmjow to bare his throat in return if he tugged in just the right way. It also meant Ichigo couldn’t do a damn thing to stop the hands that shot down the back of his sweatpants and clenched hard on his ass.

“Whoa!” Breaking away on a breathless huff of surprise, Ichigo yanked Grimmjow’s hands free. “I’m not paying for my dad’s therapy if he walks in on that.” That earned him a grumbling protest, quickly silenced by his mouth. A hand still sneaked back to rest on his ass, thankfully outside his pants that time. Ichigo didn’t even pretend to mind.

The discovery that kissing was actually a huge turn-on for Ichigo and he could happily suck on Grimmjow’s tongue for hours was a little jarring. Firstly because Ichigo could have been kissing people years ago and he hadn't, and well…kissing a guy should probably have felt different somehow. But it didn’t. Ichigo was genuinely enjoying the hell out of himself. With Grimmjow.

Wait, was he _gay?_

Oh fuck it, he didn’t even care.

“We can’t call it Operation: Fuck Urahara,” Ichigo rasped out minutes later, as Grimmjow finally slowed down his damn assault on Ichigo’s neck. “It just sends the wrong message.”

“Operation: Steal Urahara’s Shit?”

“Still terrible. Why are you so bad at this?”

Grimmjow pulled his head up to scowl at Ichigo. It was completely ruined by his kiss-reddened mouth and slightly hazy eyes, and might have actually had the opposite effect on its intended recipient. Not that Ichigo would ever tell him that.

“Fuck off, Kurosaki. First I can’t grab your ass, and now my ideas aren’t good enough? You fuckin’ think of something.”

“Fine! How about—”

The shrill chime of the doorbell scared the shit out of them both. Grimmjow actually went rigid and clawed him a little by accident. Ichigo just pulled away and hitched his pants back up a little, tugging his shirt back into place. He was still pretty sure his hair was standing up in weird tufts and his lips felt swollen, but what the hell was he going to do about it? The doorbell rang again. Someone obviously wanted in. Ichigo padded over to the door in bare feet and pulled it open.

“If you’re after the clinic, the door…”

Ichigo stared.

“I’m not,” said Rukia, her midnight blue eyes alive with triumph. She held up a clenched fist, where bright rivulets of blood were running down her arm from a gash in her hand. “I finally figured out Isshin’s key to the kidou barrier: an injured shinigami with a fresh wound will get inside.” She bared her teeth in a smile. “The good doctor could never turn away someone in need.”

“Rukia,” Ichigo whispered, feeling the world drop away from under him. “What are you…”

“There’s time for that later,” she said, gently interrupting. Her expression wasn’t unkind, but her eyes were cool. “I’m actually here on official Soul Society business.

“Now tell me: are you really harbouring one of Aizen’s last surviving espada?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys are pretty fucking cool. thanks for all the comments last chapter, and for not noticing that i accidentally published a draft like a complete asslick and went to bed


	8. Chapter 8

Rukia looked like she was developing a small headache.

“So let me understand this,” she said slowly, looking at Ichigo from her kneeling position by the coffee table. Her fists were tucked neatly to rest on her thighs, one of them freshly bandaged from the family first aid kit. “Grimmjow has been in the human world for almost a year now.”

Ichigo nodded. “Yeah.”

“And he willingly submitted to a black market gigai that, I believe, is classed as a low-level torture device by Soul Society code standards, just so he could infiltrate your father’s layered kidou barrier?”

“That…sounds right.”

“But all he wants to do is train with you?”

“Uh.” Did training cover what they’d just been doing?

“Ichigo,” Rukia pressed. “This is important.”

“Why’re you askin’ him? I’m standing right here,” Grimmjow interjected from Ichigo’s left. His shoulder was planted firmly against the wall in a casual lean, but his eyes were sharp as they followed Rukia’s every twitch and movement. “Or are you still sore about the hole I put through your guts way back when?”

Rukia didn’t even glance in his direction. “Ichigo, what are you doing with this…” Reading something in Ichigo’s face, she tried again. “He’s a risk to you and your family. Arrancar or menos or basic hollow, they’re all driven by base instinct. We have essays on it, we have classes on it—”

“Why are you here, Rukia?” Ichigo broke in, rubbing his foot against the polished floorboards like he was finding an itch. “What does Soul Society want from me?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Rukia replied, in what she probably thought was a reassuring manner. Ichigo’s stomach dropped like a rock. To his left, Grimmjow laughed unkindly. “It’s the espada that came on our radar when he stepped out of his gigai. We’re shinigami, that kind of reiatsu could never have gone un-investigated for long, and he—”

“Grimmjow.”

“What?”

“Grimmjow,” Ichigo said quietly, his eyes level on Rukia’s. “That’s his name.”

Dismay didn’t quite cover the flicker of emotion that passed over Rukia’s face as she glanced between them both, from Ichigo’s blank face to Grimmjow’s suddenly fading smile. Her remote, businesslike demeanour crumbled slightly, giving way to confusion. Ichigo couldn’t even really begin to explain what had happened, beyond what he’d already told her. But something sat terribly in his gut as he looked at his old friend, who could barely bring herself to acknowledge that Grimmjow was in the room. As if anyone could overlook him. And there was a distance between them that had never been there before, not even in those seventeen months without his powers—the last time she’d left him for what she’d decided was his better, more peaceful life. The only difference was that this time, someone hadn’t left him to his complete solitude. Someone hadn’t let him forget. Without a clean break, and for all Ichigo wanted to argue and defend her…it really did just look like he’d been dumped in the wake of a war he’d helped them win.

Watching his face with wonder and concern—she’d always been too good at reading him—Rukia didn’t quite seem to know what to say next.

“Soul Society probably thinks I’m gonna turn you,” Grimmjow said bluntly, depositing himself straight into that strange silence. “Last thing they need is the shinigami who took down Aizen to start following in his footsteps, right?”

Ichigo slowly stood up. Rukia blanched.

“How could you possibly—nobody has given  _any_  orders to that effect, Ichigo, that’s not why I’m here!” Darting Grimmjow a filthy look, she got to her feet and gripped Ichigo’s arm. “I’m only charged with figuring out what this—what he wants with you, and whether it might be to Soul Society’s detriment. That’s all. And…” Her cheeks flamed for a moment, making her look very young. “I wanted to see you again. They were going to send Matsumoto but I lied and said she had explosive diarrhoea so they’d send me instead.” Small white teeth caught on her lower lip, sunk on a bitter grimace. “I can’t completely blame the barrier for why I haven’t visited, Ichigo. To be honest, I thought you did your time, and maybe you’d prefer to stay out of the inner workings.” The hand on Ichigo’s forearm furtively slid away. “I think I made a mistake.”

There was a lot to unpack in everything she’d just said. A lot. And yet—

“You told someone that Rangiku had diarrhoea and couldn’t take the mission?” Ichigo blurted. Rukia stuck her chest out and scowled up at him.

“Do you honestly think I’d let her come to Karakura on official business before I could? Ichigo, please. I was ready to spike her sake and put her in a coma.”

“You—”

“Only for a while!” Her scowl softened a little. “I’m a lieutenant too, you know. I was a perfectly acceptable replacement.”

“More than that,” Ichigo said helplessly, feeling a smile unearth its way from a place so bruised he hadn’t been able to touch it since they first said goodbye. Reaching out, his hands clapped lightly on her shoulders and squeezed. “It  _is_ good to see you, Rukia. Are you getting shorter?”

“That reminds me, I have something for you!” Rukia immediately started patting down her uniform, finally reaching inside the folds to pull out—

“I don’t want that,” Ichigo said flatly to her raised middle finger, pushed almost right into his face. Her eyes sparked with wicked amusement. That was the thing about Rukia, he reminded himself with a start. She looked like a perfect little noble daughter and could play the part of a grim soldier, but she was still a scrappy asshole when she wanted to be. Casting his eyes to his left, he caught a chilly glance from Grimmjow, who’d been watching everything. Curling his lip slightly, Grimmjow turned until his back was fully against the wall and crossed his arms. Ichigo’s neck tingled with remembered sensation. He looked away on reflex more than anything.

Rukia caught where his gaze went though, and gave Grimmjow a considering look. Finally she sighed, her shoulders losing their sharp lines.

“Look, fine. Ichigo, you know I trust you. If you trust him—if you trust Grimmjow, I’ll tell you what’s going on.” Rukia’s frown was older than the youthful lines of her face would allow. “As best as I can tell it, anyway. Renji and the other lieutenants, we pieced together what we could.”

Exchanging another look with Grimmjow, Ichigo wondered if he did trust Grimmjow the way Rukia trusted him. He couldn’t honestly say he did. They didn’t have that kind of history. Still, maybe they didn’t have to just yet. It was peacetime after all, and Grimmjow only wanted one thing.

Well, maybe two things.

“Tell me,” Ichigo said seriously. He very pointedly didn’t react to the harsh exhale from the other side of the room.

Rukia pushed him back down to sit on the couch. This time, she took the other end of it, knees angled so that she was facing them both. While not overly alarmed, her expression was clouded in the kind of way Ichigo hadn’t really seen since loyalties had been torn the first time, all the way back when.

“Soul Society has needed a lot of repairs since…well, everything. Yhwach, the Wandenreich, all of it. We’ve made great progress, and to be honest the place is slowly returning to its former glory, but we’re running out of resources. Reishi. It’s the backbone of everything that makes Soul Society.” Rukia spread her hands in a loose gesture of acceptance. “It sustains the shinigami, it forms the stone on which we walk. Our defences. With everything obliterated and remade, to fix it all has been constructively taxing on the purest resource we have. If there’s another threat in the next ten years, I don’t think we have the stockpiles to come back from it right away. That’s our current problem, and one I think Urahara is currently aware of. I—” A sharp wail came from something inside Rukia’s sleeve, making them all flinch. She fished out a tiny phone and glanced at the screen. “Damn it. I’m recalled.” She stood in one bird-quick movement, smoothing down her uniform. Her eyes were still hesitant to run over Grimmjow’s side of the room, but it only seemed to stem from old dislike and wariness from what Ichigo could tell. Watching her adjust the scabbard at her waist, Ichigo tried to get to the heart of the matter before she left again. Who knew when she’d return?

“If Soul Society wants a trade route to Hueco Mundo, and Las Noches says no,” he said slowly, “where exactly does that leave everyone?”

“Up the creek,” Rukia said with a shrug. “Neither side is doing well at the moment, we all can agree on that. Las Noches is running on Aizen’s fumes and stolen Soul Society technology. But those materials are old, mostly broken junk now. Urahara wants to fill their requisitions in exchange for the reishi deposits so we can fortify our defences again.” Blowing a streak of dark hair out of her eyes, she finally gave Grimmjow her full attention. “Has Urahara approached you, by any chance, to unseat Harribel? To give you the throne of Hueco Mundo in exchange for the alliance?” She looked like she was committing treason by just saying it out loud, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Urahara was known for his weird plots and spies.

Grimmjow’s eyes were hard. “What’s the answer worth to you, shinigami?”

Rukia’s face was stone. “Put it this way: my report decides whether or not you get to live.”

“Put it this way: I don’t give a fuck.” Slowing pushing away from the wall, he prowled closer to Rukia with clear challenge in every line of his body. Ichigo fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“Grimmjow, gigai.”

“Shit!” Grimmjow snarled, eyeing Rukia’s two raised fingers, which glowed with the blue light of a silent kidou spell. “I hate this fucking thing.” But he didn’t approach again, and slowly she allowed the light to snuff out.

“I have to get back,” said Rukia. “This is a mess, but honestly I don’t think you two are a risk to Soul Society’s proceedings. That’s really all they wanted to find out.” Her narrow brows drew together in a tight frown. “I don’t know why we can’t just take the damn reishi. Surely it’s got to be easier than trying to negotiate with hollows.”

Part of Ichigo agreed. Hueco Mundo was a seething cesspit of hollows with varying degrees of strength, but it was also a desert of white sand, uninhabited for enormous stretches in some places. It wasn’t facing overpopulation like some areas of Soul Society. It was just a huge, lonely purgatory under a pitch black sky.

“That,” Grimmjow said slowly, “is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard come flying out a shinigami’s mouth.”

Ichigo looked up in surprise, but Grimmjow’s eyes were all for Rukia. “You think Tier Harribel is stopping you because she wants to fuck with you? She’s a cold-eyed snake but she’s not stupid: Soul Society will come in bearin’ gifts and other bullshit, sure, but when the reishi starts dipping low and the hollow start devouring each other in droves, they’re gonna evolve. And  _evolve._ ” This time when he stuck his face right in Rukia’s, she was too transfixed to bother driving him back. Bending until he was almost nose to nose, Ichigo could see the flat animal glitter in his eyes. “You have any idea how hungry an adjuchas can get? But they’re smart, see. They cluster together. When there’s enough, they’d make armies. But they ain’t gonna fuck with Soul Society, because that’s not where the food is.”

“So,” Rukia said flatly, “we exterminate the hollow on their own ground. Reduce population. Would that fix your famine, hollow?”

Grimmjow’s teeth were bared. “Shinigami don’t exterminate shit. Most of the souls go to Soul Society, don’t they? That great big paradise in the sky. And suddenly they need more reishi. They mine us again. And all the while, humans keep dying and the shinigami are too busy lookin’ after themselves. More hollows. More strain. The circle of fuckin’ life.”

The silence that fell on them was thick with tension, and a deep sense of foreboding dread. Because Grimmjow made sense, in the way only something with clear eyes on the food chain could. For him, it wasn’t balancing numbers. It was survival—and nobody knew it better than an arrancar who’d clawed his way up the evolutionary ladder on pure savage willpower alone.

Ichigo sat back tiredly. “And we’re back to wanting a treaty,” he said, feeling like his hangover had come back in force just from watching them have their pissing contest. He rubbed his temple with a lazy thumb. “But Harribel won’t deal with Urahara, and as you can probably tell, Grimmjow isn’t any kind of replacement for her. No offence,” he said mildly, though his eyes probably gave him away. “The end. This whole thing is a massive bust, Rukia. Maybe put that in the report.”

But Rukia’s eyes were beginning to light with something as she stared at Grimmjow, who was listing backward to his casual perch against the wall. Something that Ichigo hadn’t seen since she’d pushed a sword through his chest and called him shinigami. It gave him a terrible feeling that all boiled down to one word: politics.

“You,” Rukia said succinctly, even as her phone wailed its tune again, “are exactly what we need, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. You’re right: Harribel won’t listen to a shinigami.” Her midnight blue gaze flitted to Ichigo, intense with the idea she was riding on. She smiled, small and lovely and  _trouble_. “And Soul Society won’t negotiate with an arrancar.”

“Oh, come on. No.” Ichigo could see where this was leading.

“And you two get on like a house on fire, don’t you?” Rukia looked so damn pleased with herself he actually twitched with the urge to get her in a headlock. “Two envoys. A shinigami who’s donned the mask of a hollow, and a hollow who took his off for the power of a shinigami.”

“Arrancar,” Grimmjow said, with emphasis. “Not hollow.”

“Lieutenant,” Rukia shot back. “Not shinigami.”

“Sawn-off bitch.”

“Stretched asshole.”

“Oh my god, get out of my house,” Ichigo said—and took Rukia’s elbow to all but pick her up and head for the door. “Do your damn report, but I haven’t agreed to anything, all right?” He ignored her kicking legs and yowling protests, pinching her on the arm to shut her up. “I hate this tiptoeing negotiation bullshit, and I’m not some messenger boy.”

“But—ow!” Rukia yelped on another pinch, until she finally twisted his nipple through his shirt. Ichigo tried not to shed tears as he dropped her straight on her ass. “But Ichigo, you’d have clearance to come to Soul Society whenever you wanted!”

The world slowed down around him.

Soul Society, whenever he wanted. And Hueco Mundo too, he guessed. Grimmjow always did want to fight him on that battleground again one day, didn’t he? If they could go back and forth between the three worlds, if the damn trade routes were an excuse, if he could dress like a shinigami and feel like he actually was one again—

“Bye,” Ichigo said to Rukia, pushed her out the door and shut it in her flushed and earnest face. But she didn’t knock again, and after a moment he turned and rested against the cool, heavy wood, hoping his knees didn’t do anything embarrassing like folding under him. For a while he just leaned there, chin almost to his chest, eyes squeezed shut as he breathed. To his own internal credit, it only took him a moment to get his shit together. Squaring his shoulders, he pushed off the door and walked back into the living room where Grimmjow was now sitting, leaned forward in that lazy crouch that left his wrists hanging loosely over his thighs.

“Whatever she’s after, I don’t want a damn bit of it,” Grimmjow stated with flat certainty. “You can roll over for Soul Society all you want, Kurosaki. I’m not selling out Hueco Mundo for all the fuckin’ gadgets and gigai Urahara can vomit up. Harribel won’t either.”

Ichigo barely rolled his eyes. “Because you’re all about the balance of life and death?”

“Because it’s home.”

The honest admission carried more weight than Grimmjow probably realised, but to Ichigo it hit squarely on the mark. Home, he could understand. Maybe not why anything would be attached to a giant barren wasteland full of killer hollows all trying to eat each other, but the concept of preserving the place that raised him up—well, yeah. Ichigo got that.

“So,” Ichigo said, coming to sit in the centre cushion of the couch, “if you like it so much, why are you here? I’m—I’ve been locked out of Soul Society for over a year now, but you could just open a garganta and go back whenever you want.”

“Who says I don’t?” Grimmjow’s shoulders twitched irritably. “I’m not Urahara’s slave, you dumb shit. I don’t jump to attention when someone rings a damn bell.” The derision in his voice implied heavily who he thought did. “And make no fuckin’ mistake, the only reason that four feet of sword and bullshit came down from the ivory tower is because of  _me_. Again. You’re still just Soul Society’s disposable little wind-up toy.”

Ichigo sat back heavily, staring across the room at his black reflection in the switched-off television. In that dark rectangle, they were just two silhouettes on the couch, separated by barely a foot of space. They didn’t even look that different.

“Get fucked, Grimmjow. It’s not a crime to miss people.” And he did; he missed Renji and Rangiku and Rukia—he missed Toshirou, Byakuya, Kenpachi and the entire eleventh division of berserkers and madmen. He missed walking around in a world full of spiritual energy and sunshine, with a sword on his back and a goal to fulfil. “I know what I am: I’m the substitute. I only step in when there’s nobody else. I knew that when I took the job for the second time.”

Beside him, the black figure in the television laughed once, coldly.

“That’s what makes you pathetic, Kurosaki. Some useless asshole shows you a shred of kindness and you’re ready to die for ‘em, no questions asked.”

Something sharp and cruel rose in Ichigo’s chest, sick and tired of Grimmjow’s endless spiteful needling.

“That’s bullshit. I wouldn’t die for you.”

A hand like an iron vice clamped under Ichigo’s jaw, forcing his head around, dragging it close. Burning blue eyes glared into his, viciously approving.

“And here’s the difference between me and them, Kurosaki:  _I'll never fuckin' ask you to._ "

Ichigo stared back into Grimmjow’s face, scanning the gathered snarl at the bridge of his nose, his narrowed eyes, his twisted mouth. The green estigma that made his short lashes stand out like silk brushes, the thin knot of his scowling brow. He looked like such an  _asshole_  and he was gripping Ichigo’s jaw like he wanted to break it with his bare hands.

Ichigo felt for the first time, with a sudden and horrible urgency, like he wanted to sink his own fingers deep into Grimmjow’s skin, into his tendons and muscles and bones, and grip so tightly that even the hard yank of Soul Society’s leash couldn’t pry them apart.

“And you said  _I'm_  fucked,” Ichigo muttered, wrenching his face free of that bruising grip and shoving Grimmjow back against the armrest of the couch. “Do you even realise you keep making these embarrassing statements, or do they just keep flying out at the push of a button?” He clambered over Grimmjow’s thighs, hiking his sweatpants up when they threatened to sink too low. Grimmjow’s tilted eyes were wide and wary, probably having expected a punch over Ichigo straddling him on the family couch. “Seems like—” Ichigo tipped Grimmjow’s face up this time, sinking his tongue deep into his waiting mouth for a lingering moment, “—like every time I piss you off or you think I’m gonna ditch you, you bust out one of those.”

A long-fingered hand wrapped around the nape of Ichigo’s neck, preventing him from pulling away. The kiss he received was angry, biting and punishingly possessive. He gave as good as he got, tasting the coppery tang of blood pulled through abused lips, erasing the syrup-saccharine flavour of earlier. Without giving it any thought Ichigo bore down on the body under his legs, under his hands, pressing fingertips into flesh hidden only by a thin layer of cloth. Grimmjow snarled softly in the back of his throat and lifted his hips.

“Gonna use me, like Soul Society’s using you?” Grimmjow rasped against Ichigo’s ear, mixing with the echoing white wind laughing somewhere in the back of his mind. “Two abominations, two loose ends.” Shoving Ichigo’s knees out from under him, Grimmjow pushed them flush together. His eyes were blazing, his sharp teeth bared. “Hueco Mundo won’t bow to a damn shinigami rule.” He rolled his hips against Ichigo’s, the blade-sharp bones of his hips grinding into muscle. And between them—

“I won’t let it happen like that,” Ichigo gasped out, fingers sinking into the old couch armrest above Grimmjow’s head. He felt himself be kissed, bruised, as hands shoved the loose waistband off his hips, reaching down to grip him firmly in a calloused hand. Two sure pulls and Ichigo dropped his head into clean blue hair and a pale stretch of neck, reaching beneath himself for the hard snap of jeans and a zipper he could tug down. “We’re gonna do this—like equals, or not at all. And,” he sucked in a breath as Grimmjow’s hand tightened in reaction to Ichigo’s fingers finding hot hardness, tugging it free, “you could go a bit faster, you know?”

“Fuck off,” Grimmjow grunted, voice thready and strained as Ichigo worked him. The words vibrated into Ichigo’s suckling mouth, working its way down a lean throat bobbing on each swallowed curse. “Don’t tell me what to do.” But his actions belied his words, and soon Ichigo was rocking mindlessly down onto him, hands caught between them, the teeth of an open zipper leaving bite marks in his thigh. They moved like it was just one more fight, mirrored and rough, greedy to touch skin and leave a mark. Skin sliding, sweat rising and a few breathy insults for good measure.

Ichigo barely registered the moment Grimmjow tensed hard beneath him until his face turned into the salty crook of his neck, Ichigo’s fingers suddenly slick and moving freely on twitching flesh. The sound that left Grimmjow could only be described as pissed off. Rapturous, but pissed off. He might have laughed if he had any breath, but it was quickly stolen as his hand was slapped away, hips dragged down to the slick and sweaty mess left behind, rocking up against him in the aftershocks. It was all kind of a muddle after that.

“That’s gross,” Ichigo wheezed a few minutes later, rising and falling as the chest below him sucked air in like it had gone without for days. “That shouldn’t have worked.”

“You came like a sixteen year old,” Grimmjow wheezed right back, a hoarse laugh barking out of him. “I think it’s on my chin.” Horrendous fucking lies aside, hands did reach down to tug Ichigo’s sweatpants back up a little, which was good, because it was hard to move. “I didn’t think this gigai could get it up, Kurosaki. Good job.”

“Thank Urahara,” he grumbled, lifting himself as Grimmjow tried to pull his own jeans up into order. Good luck, he thought with faint spite. They were striped sticky from thigh to stomach. “He obviously wanted you happy. Wonder why.”

The silence that laid between them wasn’t anything more than slumberous and thoughtful, but Ichigo’s mind was on the events leading right up to them tangled up together on an old couch. A kidou barrier. Soul Society’s defences. Communications broken down. Harribel. Urahara. Reishi. Gigai. And Grimmjow, his self-sworn nemesis, the enemy who promised he’d kill him one day. Slowly, Ichigo lifted his chin until he could see Grimmjow’s eyes.

“I don’t want to be some envoy passing notes between Soul Society and Hueco Mundo. Let’s do it properly.”

“How’s that?”

“They want Urahara’s tech down in Hueco Mundo, right? All the defences down there are busted after the Wandenreich invaded.” Ichigo had to bite his lip to fight down his sudden swell of laughter.

Grimmjow just frowned. “Yeah, and?”

“So let’s sell him like a new bride. Put Urahara in the contract terms: one year in Hueco Mundo, construction on site.”

For a long moment Grimmjow was as still and silent as the grave. Then, in a voice of dark and delicious triumph:

“Operation: Fuck Urahara.”

Ichigo leaned up to meet the rough kiss Grimmjow dealt him, still kind of laughing through his nose.

“Stop calling it that.”


	9. Chapter 9

Two days later on a lazy summer afternoon, Ichigo was idly slaughtering enemies in Super Mario World and arguing with a stuffed animal.

“You can’t be angry with me forever, you know. I already said I was sorry.”

“Go to hell, Ichigo! I hope you get crabs!” A pencil hit Ichigo in the back of the neck, launched like a javelin from a felt paw. “You selfish traitor! You thoughtless imbecile!”

Sighing, Ichigo resumed his lazy assault on the turtle population of the mushroom kingdom. Kon had been at it for days already and wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down just yet. In fact, Ichigo had been out of the house more in the last few days than he’d been in months, just trying to avoid him. But what more could he do? He’d already apologised. It just seemed where Rukia was concerned, Kon would accept nothing less than total loss of dignity and weepy begging. Which…hell no.

“Imagine if Rukia came here and you were asleep under the bed, and I didn’t wake you! Imagine it, Ichigo! That I had a big conversation and hugged her and touched her boobs a little—”

“I never did that!”

“Which is why you’re a waste of testosterone and good genes!” Kon howled, throwing himself onto the bed in impotent fury. “I don’t even have a dick in this body and I’m still being cock-blocked!” Burying his stuffed lion face in the quilt, he proceeded to throw a full-body tantrum, finally giving up on all his pride. Cross-legged on the end of the bed, Ichigo tried not to roll his eyes. On the screen, Mario fell straight in a hole and died. He tossed the controller on the end of the bed and twisted around to grab Kon.

“All right, how can I make it up to you?” How can I shut you up was probably more accurate, Ichigo thought to himself as Kon went limp in his hands, beetle-black eyes somehow shiny with tears. “As long as it doesn’t involve girls, Kon. If you ask me one more time to throw you in the neighbour’s bathroom window—”

“I want your body!” Kon said in an excited rush. “Please let me be inside you, Ichigo! I’ll take good care of it, I won’t even jerk off this time I promise, I  _promise._ "

“That is such a lie,” Ichigo said in disgust. “I don’t even think there’s been a time so far where you haven’t given my body back all…”

“Relaxed? Sated? Like the stick had been temporarily removed from your ass?”

“Shut up. You want it or not?” Hauling Kon up to eye level, Ichigo’s mouth curled in a terrifying smile. “Because I could just go masturbate right now instead.”

“That’s gross! Let me do it!” Wriggling in his excitement, Kon almost poked Ichigo straight in the eye. “Come on, I’ll get the badge. I’ll have your body back by midnight, I’ll even shower it and hang a piss so you get a good sleep!” Pushing himself out of Ichigo’s grip, he eagerly leapt toward the desk where the combat pass was shoved into a drawer.

Watching him rummage for the badge, Ichigo was sure he could remember a time when conversations like the one he just had would have led to a freaked-out screaming match, but years of treating his body as both luggage and reward had left himself and Kon in a strangely symbiotic relationship. That was probably the first time they’d ever directly talked about Kon’s personal stress relief, though. Ichigo knew it was weird, it was entirely weird, but if he had to share custody of his body once in a blue moon he could probably do worse than Kon. Probably.

Grabbing the recovered badge Ichigo pressed it to his chest, shooting backwards out of his own flesh and bone, watching it fall backward into his lap on the bed. Propping the boneless weight of his body up, he sighed as Kon threw himself toward it.

“Give me a second to get you out of there—”

“I can do it!” Kon said gleefully, and squirrel-jumped straight onto the body’s slack face, pressing his fuzzy mouth to Ichigo’s. The gagging noise that came after it said that Kon had just vomited his own soul candy straight into Ichigo’s gaping mouth like a mother bird feeding her young. Appalled, Ichigo yanked the stuffed animal away but the damage was already done; his body’s eyes opened, alive with glee and horny mischief combined. “Yeahhh! I wasn’t sure that move was going to work!”

“You’re the worst,” Ichigo said flatly, shoving Kon out of his lap and getting off the bed. Straightening the folds of his shihakushou, he grabbed Zangetsu and slung the larger blade more comfortably across his back. “Midnight, okay, and if you do anything illegal I’m going to send Yuzu out for you.” Hit by a suddenly burst of inspiration, he added, “Or Grimmjow.”

Kon shuddered. “Not that guy. He’s got a case of rapeface, Ichigo.”

“No he—” Ichigo stopped himself to frown. “I think it’s the smile.”

“It’s everything,” Kon said slowly, like Ichigo might be delusional. Yanking his underwear out of his ass with a sigh, he turned and started rummaging in the wardrobe. “I’m not going out dressed like a hobo. Where’s that garnet coloured shirt with the snap buttons?”

“Garnet?”

“Dark red,” Kon said with long-suffering patience.

“I think it’s in the drawers.”

“Plebeian.”

“Fuck off.”

“I intend to.”

“Good.”

“Fine.” Grabbing the chosen outfit, Kon fled for the bathroom in a smug whirlwind. Irritated beyond belief, Ichigo tried to remind himself that he’d gotten what he’d been after: a bit of damn peace and quiet. But at what cost? Kon was probably going out to hit the town and get him put on a watch list somewhere. Still, it was kind of nice to be back in his shinigami form, even if he didn’t really need to be. The last time outside the bunker had been when Grimmjow’s gigai had been about to explode, which was as far from fun as he’d gotten since they’d met up again.

That was how Ichigo found himself wandering the red-washed streets of Karakura at sunset, unseen and liberated, even if it had been for wholly trivial reasons. Once he got out from under Isshin’s barrier, it was like a curtain had been pulled back, putting his hometown into points of light and faint flickers of reiatsu in the distance, hidden by the hot glare of a sinking summer sun. It didn’t bother him anymore, feeling those distant sparks. One was Ishida, coming from the hospital. His father’s cold white aura was nearby. Another felt a lot like Tatsuki, somewhere out west. Chad was long gone, of course; the town hadn’t been big enough to hold him and all his strength. And Inoue…if he pushed himself, Ichigo could feel her presence out there, though it was so small it could have just been a mirage. She never projected herself without a reason. She never had.

Breathing the scent of hot grass and road tar, Ichigo turned in the other direction, where a cluster of reiatsu could be divided into one, two…five different signatures. Yoruichi wasn’t there, but the others all were. Grimmjow included. His reiatsu burst behind Ichigo’s eyes like gaslight, like pins and needles. It would be easy, almost natural to turn in that direction and leap, but it felt equally off-limits in a way Ichigo couldn’t quite put his finger on. Urahara’s was for Fridays and fighting in the bunker, or for supplies and advice. He’d been there just the day before; going back again would be a break in the routine they’d made. Besides, they were still waiting for Rukia to get back in touch about her bright idea of making them envoys, or ambassadors or whatever. Ichigo still didn’t know how that was supposed to work, or even if he’d see her again anytime soon. Strangely, after their last meeting the idea didn’t leave him with the painful twist in his stomach he’d gotten so used to. She was just working, just living. Like they were all supposed to.

Like Ichigo was supposed to.

Walking the quiet suburban roads, watching the orange-red light sink into pink and then lavender, the heat of the sun finally leaving his skin, Ichigo thought about whether he was doing better lately. It felt like he was, and it felt like Grimmjow was at the centre of it, though he didn’t want the credit. The credit didn’t mean as much to him as the fights, or the drinking. Or other stuff. Whatever they were calling those bursts of hungry madness that happened two days in a row.

They hadn’t talked about it afterwards, just cleaned up and agreed to meet again the next day for their usual Friday battle. It wasn’t like—it wasn’t like Grimmjow had kissed him goodbye or anything. They still beat the utter shit out of each other in the bunker, still laughed stupidly and called out useless moves and missed punches. But after, Ichigo hadn’t hung around. He’d been able to move, anyway, so there wasn’t any point. And if he’d moved a little bit faster, said goodbye a little more quickly, who cared? He’d had a shift at the restaurant to get to. Dishes needed washing. Ingredients needed cutting. Grimmjow didn’t care anyway, he’d just watched with his sharp blue eyes and said nothing. It was probably trivial shit to him anyway, since Grimmjow always did exactly as he pleased. If he’d had something to say, he would have said it.

His aimless strolling took him down into the middle of town, where the manicured gardens of the town park sprawled open and inviting, its sculpted shrubs blooming heavily with flowers he didn’t know the name of. Lush lawns glittered dark emerald and wet, having just finished their evening spray. It smelled alive, fragrant with flowers and empty since the watering system had kicked in. Ichigo walked toward it almost on autopilot. He had nowhere else to be, why not get back to nature? He—

“Mister! Help meee!”

Ichigo tensed at the raw fear in the voice, head whipping around. A small boy with a mess of black hair was running out of the bushes, panting breaths wheezing in his tiny throat. His tear-filled eyes were wide with blank, primal terror. The chain protruding from his thin chest jangled against his breastbone as he fled.

A plus? A plus child? Ichigo hadn’t seen once since—

“Over here!” he yelled to the boy, waving his arms. “This way!” Watching the kid divert in a wide circle to head toward him, legs shaking with exertion, Ichigo leapt out to meet the kid. From the looks of him, he’d been running for a while. Catching the boy in his arms, feeling the tiny jackhammer of his heartbeat, Ichigo cast his senses out for any hollow in the area. “Kid, where’s the danger? Where’s the hollow?”

The boy sniffled, nose running a mess down to his upper lip. “The what?”

Ichigo stared helplessly. “The hollow—the monster chasing you? Big white mask?”

“There’s nothing like that. I just,” the kid hiccupped in remembered fear, “I saw a bug. It ran toward me.”

Ichigo sagged slightly. Of course there’d be no hollow in the area. The friendly neighbourhood shinigami—the real one—would have taken care of anything in the area long ago. But that didn’t explain why there was a dead kid running through the town park. Taking a good look at the boy, he didn’t look any older than six. Younger than he’d been when his mother had died, hurtling through bushes alone because an insect had frightened him. He patted the kid on both shoulders, giving him a light squeeze, and tried to smile in the way that used to reassure Karin and Yuzu when they were young.

“There’s no bugs out here now, they all went to bed for the night. See how dark it’s getting?” The boy looked up at the stars peeking through the night sky and quailed. Well, that didn’t help. Scared of bugs, scared of the dark. Just a kid, Ichigo told himself, trying to remember. “But it’s okay, because you’ve got me with you. Nothing’s going to get you.”

“Promise?” the boy sniffled, sucking a huge drip of snot back into his nose. Ichigo very carefully swallowed a gag.

“Yeah…yeah, I promise.” Ichigo found himself flailing for a moment, before he remembered that it had never been about his qualifications, or whether he was sanctioned to do what he did. Karakura was his. This was his town. These were his souls. His kids. The afro-guy would get to them eventually, but if Ichigo got to them first it was just shinigami helping shinigami.

He wasn’t a fraud.

“What happened to you? How’d you get here like this?” Ichigo asked steadily, and swiped a tear off the boy’s cheek with the back of his hand. His spirit form was wearing little shorts and a sailor-striped blue and white tee. His skin was pale under his blotchy-faced tears, but his eyes were massive and brown. He looked…well, like any other kid in summer. Except he was dead.

“My mother got a new boyfriend,” the boy started to say with hitching breaths, growing heavier with anxiety. His enormous eyes were shining with tears and new starlight. “He doesn’t like me. But he wanted to play a game on the roof, and Mama told me I had to be a good boy around him.” He pointed past the park, to a run-down complex the town council had tried to hide with a tree line. It had to be at least five storeys high. “I fell down.”

Something hard clenched in Ichigo’s gut, in places where his hate wanted to fester. “All right, kid. You told me enough.” Patting the boy’s head with a careful hand, he didn’t flinch when his fingers curved the back of his small skull and found it wet and crumbled. Oh, god. “You want to get away from all these bugs? Go somewhere happy, where you can wait for your mother?”

“Yeah,” the kid whispered, knuckling tears out of his own eyes by then. His mouth was trembling but courageous. “But I don’t want him to come with her.”

“He ain’t coming,” said another voice, usually reserved for blunt sardonic quips. Just then it sounded reared up, claws out and teeth shining. Ichigo looked up out of his crouch to see Grimmjow standing above them both, his down-turned mouth snarling as his eyes switched between them both. “Trust me kid, that ain’t the direction he’s going.”

Staring up at Grimmjow for a long instant, Ichigo snatched his gaze away to smile at the boy. “I’ll send you on somewhere there’s a lot of sunshine, yeah? And—don’t let anyone make you go somewhere you don’t think is safe. Not ever.”

“Okay?” the boy said, looking between them in confusion. Ichigo took the chance to take Zangetsu by the hilt, to catch the boy’s small face in his grip and give him a careful tap in the centre of his forehead, completing the konsou. He watched as soft light gathered around his small body, suffusing him with safety and warmth. His fearful eyes cleared into something peaceful as his spirit left the earthly plane, dissolving into light like dandelion fluff, intangible and gone within a breath.

When the light was gone, Ichigo sank back onto his ass in a damp field of grass, the sky overhead black and bruised purple. Stars like pinpricks seemed to drill down into the top of his head. He was breathing hard and he didn’t know why.

“You were at Urahara’s a second ago,” Ichigo said into the silence. “Weren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“You move fast.”

“Thought I felt a shinigami in the area.”

Amazingly, Ichigo felt his mouth twitch.

“You did.”

The park was dark but for the stars overhead, but Ichigo didn’t really want to move. His hand felt tacky with blood that wasn’t there. He didn’t need his sword but he still wanted to swing it. Had it been hard like that last time? Had he asked how they’d died? He didn’t even think of protesting as a warm weight sank down beside him, even when Ichigo realised Grimmjow was dressed in black and white, his sword strapped to his waist in two long belt-loops. The jawbone was bright on his cheek.

“You’re not in your gigai,” Ichigo said quietly, unsure why he didn’t really care. Or mind. “How’d you get out of Urahara’s?”

“Sonido.” Grimmjow’s shoulder bumped into Ichigo’s. “Kisuke didn’t care this time. He must think I’m a sure thing.”

“Are you?”

“Never that.” He gave Ichigo a strange look, tilting his head at the place the kid had stood a moment ago. “Is this what you do, Kurosaki? Coddle kids and tell them it’s all goin’ to be okay, then shove ‘em upstairs into slums? How’s that safety?”

Startled by the question, more startled by the curiosity, it took Ichigo a moment to come up with a reply. “It’s the reishi, same as it’s always been,” he said slowly. “The regular pluses, they’re fine and happy. But anyone with reiryoku, with potential, they need more. I don’t think soul society regulated enough of it to start with. People like Rukia, or Renji, they starved as kids until their potential was recognised.” The body beside him shifted, warmth radiating from an inch away. The rough brush of his white jacket touched his uniform.

“Always thought soul society was the ideal,” Grimmjow said. He tensed like glass ready to shatter, teeth clenched. “Have they been fucked up this long? These gutter-trash kids, they been goin’ without this whole time?”

Ichigo thought about it. And thought about it some more.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Grimmjow’s head lowered. Even in the sinking darkness, his eyes seemed to gleam blue-white and furious, like he carried a light of his own. His hands clenched in and out of fists in a way Ichigo had put down to indecision and rising emotions since last time he’d had an outburst.

“We give them Hueco Mundo’s reishi, and they want to strengthen their walls with it. Their castles.” His mouth was a flat, pale line. “And the trash stay at the bottom of the barrel and die. Plenty more where that came from. Acceptable loss, right? It’s just survival.” The words sounded old, echoed.

Ichigo side-eyed him. “Thought you were the survivalist.”

“Yeah, but there’s no kids in Hueco Mundo because some human thought it’d be fun to smash skulls like eggshell. We all know what we are down there. Point is to claw to the top knowing you got there on the backs of shit-heaps who were too weak.” Grimmjow turned his face slightly, luminous and snarling. “What the fuck are they doing up there lettin’ kids die twice?”

Ichigo couldn’t find the words. Truth was, he didn’t really know, and it frustrated him too.

“Why do you care? Back when you were hollow, just some bottom-feeder, you’d have chewed on kids just like him without thinking twice.” Pressing his hands down to the damp grass, Ichigo pulled his palms down along it, trying to erase the sensation of tacky blood clinging to his skin. “What’s the difference?”

A hand slammed into his unguarded throat, driving him hard down to the grass. Bracketed by the startling night sky, Grimmjow’s face was rage-thin, his eyes slitted and hard as glass.

“Think I eat kids, Kurosaki? Think I came prowling into this world for dead boys and dropped babies? Think that fed me up to where I am today? Think that made me strong?”

Ichigo’s face went slack. Did that—was that—

“No, of course not!” Gripping the wrist that shoved him into the grass, Ichigo tried to yank it away. It didn’t work. “I don’t!”

“The fuck you don’t! You just said it!”

He had said it, Ichigo thought blankly, blinking up at the empty sky. Like it was nothing, like it didn’t matter, like it was normal for every hollow—like everyone made him think it was, all this time—he’d said it. Like they were all the same, when it was obvious they weren’t, or they’d all become adjuchas. They’d all become vasto lorde. They’d all become arrancar.

But they weren’t all created equal, and Ichigo knew that. He knew that.

Grimmjow’s eyes were incandescent, reflecting fury in a way Ichigo had never seen before. Somehow, this mattered. How Ichigo thought he’d gotten his strength mattered to Grimmjow. He forced himself to meet those eyes head-on and let his hand fall away, limp in the wet grass.

“I’m sorry,” Ichigo said, hoarse beneath the vice of his hand.

The grip on his neck didn’t let up. If anything it spasmed even tighter, until the tendons of his throat ground against the bones of his neck. Ichigo’s airway closed. Lights sprang up in a halo around the edges of his vision.

For an instant, looking down at him, Grimmjow’s expression seemed to fracture. Then the hand vanished.

It felt like hours later when Ichigo started hauling air into his lungs again, feeling like maybe it would have been better to pass out and forget. But the grass was still wet under him, the stars still shining. And beside him an arrancar sat hunched over like a gargoyle: back to him, surrounded by a reiryoku glow that hissed softly like steam. In the grass, Zangetsu lay dormant and dead like it knew without a doubt he’d never try to swing it.

Ichigo swallowed around what felt like a throat full of broken glass.

“I think I might be an asshole.” He couldn’t hide the husking rasp of his voice if he tried. “So you never once came into this world, before Aizen made you like this?”

Grimmjow’s head lifted slightly. When he turned, his expression was absolutely filthy with anger.

“So I could get killed by some shinigami before I could even make adjuchas? Like an idiot?” His lip curled. “Admit it, Kurosaki. You don’t know shit about hollow. To you it’s all playin’ the hero, saving big-titted girls from broken-mask monsters.” Narrowed eyes raked Ichigo from head to toe. “You got no idea what it’s like to have to eat and eat just to make sure you don’t regress back into some lumbering brain-dead thing like the others. Once you’ve done that, Kurosaki, clawed up from the seething garbage, there’s no point sniffing around this world for human scraps. They don’t feed you worth shit, and you’re smart enough by then to know exactly what the fuck you’d be doing.”

Ichigo didn’t know what to say. Maybe there wasn’t anything to say. Pushing himself so he was sitting up, he gingerly pressed on the sides of his throat. It was going to bruise, all right. He thought he might deserve it. Grimmjow didn’t bother moving away when their sleeves brushed, but he pointedly wouldn’t look in his direction. Stomach twisting, Ichigo didn’t think he had the guts to reach out and touch him, to make Grimmjow meet his eyes. It would probably just lead to a fight, and for once Grimmjow didn’t look like he’d enjoy it.

The absurdity of the entire situation wasn’t completely lost on Ichigo. He’d hurt an arrancar’s feelings by assuming he did what most hollow would cheerfully do: manifest in the human world and chew on some unsuspecting prey. Worse, he felt terrible about it. What made Grimmjow different, really? What was down there in the core of him that defined whether he evolved up or stayed one of those human-hunting types, that gave him a mind that could think and choose and—have something like a sense of honour?

“You know what the most fucked up part of this is?” Grimmjow said heatedly, shifting around abruptly to glare at Ichigo. “If you spent all this time thinking I was like that, what the hell were you doing with your hand wrapped around my dick a couple days back?”

Ichigo blinked at him for a moment, uncomprehending. Then a rush of sudden heat warmed his face and ears.

“I—I guess I never really thought about it until tonight,” he said, careful not to stammer too much. “I’ve only known you like you are now. It’s not like I’m some kind of deviant or anything!”

Grimmjow actually scoffed. “Seems like some weird shit to me.”

“Shut up. And I said I was sorry.”

“And I’m still fuckin’ pissed off! Imagine that, Kurosaki; your apologies don’t magically fix shit.” Leaning in close, Grimmjow scowled. Ichigo fought the primal instinct to lean away so hard he put himself on his back in the grass again. “Suppose you think deer-features back in Las Noches hunted in this world too, before she evolved.”

“Nel?” Weird, gap-toothed little Nel, hunting anyone? Even in her woman form, Nel possessed a kind of gentle, grim composure when facing enemies. The idea of her tearing and shredding her way up through the ranks of the hollow barely made any sense to begin with, let alone her hunting for humans to survive. But Nel was a hollow, like Grimmjow was a hollow. Ichigo felt his head start to ache. “I’m still not even sure Nel wasn’t boiled up in some secret underground lab like a Powerpuff Girl,” he admitted, pushing Grimmjow’s face back with his entire palm. “I see your point, though.”

“Good.” Shifting back to his original position, Grimmjow knocked his hand away. Ichigo sighed and started to seriously wonder about his life. A shinigami and an arrancar sitting side by side in the wet grass, sleeves brushing, challenging values and arguing about life without ever touching their swords. What a night.

“So why does it matter?” Ichigo asked some time later, his head tipped up to the stars. It was so clear by then that the sky looked like one of those cracked-open geodes, everything sharp and glittering crystal inside. “Why does it matter what I think? You’re used to thinking the worst of shinigami.” He felt the moment Grimmjow turned his head to look at him, but his eyes were caught by a streak of light moving through the night sky. Probably just a satellite, but that was pretty great as well; just brightly arcing through the sky on its path, heedless of his rapt attention. Everything always looked just a little bit sharper and more colourful when he was in spirit form. Even Grimmjow looked sharper, Ichigo thought with a faint quirk of his lips, finally turning to meet his gaze. But his smile slowly faded.

Because Grimmjow was watching him like maybe he was a satellite, too.

“You ask some stupid fuckin’ questions, Kurosaki.”

 


	10. Chapter 10

It was a quiet night when Ichigo got the message.

The shift at the restaurant had been finished about an hour before, mostly a blur of mechanically chopping herbs, vegetables and meat, all fried up into noodles and whatever. Good with a knife, his boss always told him with a faintly perplexed smile. Ichigo knew he looked like enough bad news that the guy got weird ideas sometimes, but he didn’t fire him, so whatever worked to keep receiving a paycheck was fine. Slowly he was amassing enough money for a place of his own, once he could afford the monthly rent.

Until then he was sitting on the family couch in the lamplit darkness, freshly showered, yawning to himself and idly clicking through channels while Yuzu dozed against his shoulder. Kon was clenched in her arms, but seemed to be asleep as well from the silence that emanated from him. If Kon wasn’t talking he might as well be dead or asleep.

His phone buzzed in his pocket somewhere between _Giada’s Kitchen_ and _Criminal Minds_ , dragging him away from the eternal struggle of figuring out what he wanted on as background noise in the room while he thought about other things. Tapping the screen open, Ichigo was greeted by the pale glow of an incoming message alert.

_**[Sandal-Hat]:** Need you to come to the shop. Big news????? Also Grimmjow v. antsy since Saturday—did you fight?_

Ichigo read the message three times, trying to decipher Urahara’s particular brand of communication. Grimmjow was antsy? What was antsy? Angry? They hadn’t left the park angry. Sure, it had been kind of awkward and Ichigo had entertained the idea of shaking his hand in farewell, but that was mostly because he was in varying stages of mortification over the whole accusing him of eating children thing. God, just thinking about it sent him cold with shame all over again. He was actually pretty lucky Grimmjow hadn’t used cero to give him a second asshole for that.

Big news, huh? Whatever the abundance of question marks meant, Ichigo supposed he was about to find out.

 _Give me fifteen minutes,_ he texted back. Urahara’s reply was a string of emojis that signalled agreement, and then weirdly, the chicken drumstick. Okay. Shoving his phone into his pocket, Ichigo reached around and under Yuzu to lift her up into his arms. She was a bit big to be carrying to bed, but he didn’t feel like waking her up just because Urahara had gossip to share. She gave a querulous murmur and tucked her head under his chin, still soundly and trustingly asleep. At the tail end of sixteen years old that probably shouldn’t still be cute, he thought with a sigh. Clenched in her hands, Kon was looking up at Ichigo with a bit of a squint happening. Guess he’d woken someone up.

Kon did have the decency to wait until he’d deposited Yuzu on her bed and covered her with a blanket, clinging to Ichigo’s shoulder in silence until he made it back to his room. Then he dived off onto the bed.

“I have to go to Urahara’s,” Ichigo said without preamble, stopping whatever he’d been about to say. “You can have my body but do me a favour and stay here, okay? Dad’s up with a sick kid in the clinic and Yuzu will be on her own if she wakes up.”

“What kind of monster do you think I am?” Kon said, affronted. “I’m not leaving her alone in the house! I’ll just crack your high scores on that game you play. Leave your phone here and text it from one at the shop if you need me.” Apparently of the belief he’d said all he needed to say, Kon reached deep into his own mouth and puked up his soul candy. The stuffed lion fell face down on the blanket a moment later. A little bit touched by Kon’s thoughtful attitude—even if it meant losing his high score—Ichigo grabbed the pill and swallowed it, feeling that instant rush of Kon’s soul swelling behind his own, pushing him clean out of his body like he didn’t fit there anymore.

“Ugh, why is your underwear always halfway up your ass?” Kon grumbled, doing his customary squats. “These pants are too tight! Do you even want kids someday?”

“They’re reassuringly fitted!” Ichigo said, sliding the window open and hooking a leg over the windowsill already. “What the hell would you know, Kon, you’re naked most of the time.”

“Pervert!”

“Pot!”

“Kettle! Wait—”

Ichigo was already gone with a snort, flash-stepping his way across the rooftops in a beeline for the shop. Kon was always entertaining, even when he didn’t mean to be. They’d used to have more moments like that, just bickering and fighting, but always friendly about it. For a while there, there’d been nothing at all. Ichigo wondered if that had bothered Kon, back in those busy days where everything was happening, all the time. Then later, when there was nothing at all. It was good, now. More than good. Trading his body off to Kon, getting out, the bunker, the bar, feeling the weight of a sword across his back. And now, Urahara wanted him to visit because he had news.

It was really starting to feel like old times again, and Ichigo was loving it more than he could say.

At eleven at night, Urahara’s shop could almost be considered creepy but it probably had more to do with the blown streetlamp out front shrouding the building in darkness. Ichigo vaguely remembered Jinta being responsible for that one. Him and his damn home runs. He might have a hopeless crush on Yuzu but his personality probably suited Karin a lot more.

“You made it,” Ururu said from the counter as he slid open the door and stepped inside. She was in her pyjamas, a pink summer ensemble with frilly bows. A little freaked out that he was seeing a young teenage girl who wasn’t his sister in her sleeping clothes, Ichigo switched his gaze to the short aisles of candy that made up the store’s front. “Kisuke’s down the hall, second on the left in the living room. They’re a bit rowdy tonight.” Her tone was apologetic, her eyes tired. Clearly she hadn’t wanted to be the one waiting up for his arrival.

“Thanks, Ururu. You should get some sleep. Isn’t it school tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she said, shrugging, “but Jinta and I flipped for it. He’s got an exam tomorrow so I fudged the coin toss. He needs the rest more than me. Anyway, go on. I still have to lock up.”

“Right.” What a good kid, Ichigo thought as he headed through to the back of the store, where the living quarters were separated from the shop. Before he shut the door though, he hesitated and turned back. “Hey, Ururu, has Grimmjow been acting…differently lately?”

Pushing the deadbolt up into place on the door, Ururu turned and spread her hands.

“He’s always weird, but kind of fun. He likes training us, but I don’t think he’s very happy,” she admitted. “He’s been pacing a lot since he went out to find you. Did you fight?”

Did they fight? Maybe they didn’t draw steel, but Ichigo was pretty sure they had.

“I said something dumb and it made him pretty mad. Sorry for the trouble.”

“It’s okay,” she said reassuringly, clasping her hands together in front of her. Ichigo hoped she wasn’t about to bow. “Grimmjow likes you a lot, and so do we. It’s okay to be dumb sometimes. Just—don’t stop visiting, okay?” Her cheeks bloomed like twin roses. “It’s been quiet this last year. Kisuke wanted you to visit, but you never did.”

Oh, no. Guilt.

“I’ll do better from now on.” Impulsively, he added, “I could even train you guys a little as well, if you wanted. I know it can get easier to predict someone’s fighting moves if they’re all you have experience with.”

Ururu stiffened with surprise, her eyes rounding. “Yeah? I mean—yeah! Yes! Please. You could even bring Yuzu as well, i-if she wanted to come, that is. Not to fight, but just to…throw Jinta off his game.” Stammering and embarrassed by her outburst, Ururu’s face looked like it was about to self-combust. She was probably around Yuzu’s age too. Why weren’t they better friends? It was always tough, being spiritually aware at that age and not having friends who understood. Mentally Ichigo made a note to ask about it when he got home, and with a wave and a smile he headed into the back rooms, where the faint echo of kidou barriers broke over his spirit form like water, allowing him in. Absently Ichigo wondered if one of those barriers was the one that kept Grimmjow inside the house when he wasn’t in his gigai.

Feeling the reiatsu up ahead in the living room, knowing he was putting off the inevitable, Ichigo marched straight up to the room and slid open the door just in time to realise there’d been an extra signature he hadn’t felt for a while.

“Oh, Ichigo!” Rukia said with a raised hand, waving at him. There was a small cup of sake in front of her, mostly empty. Her cheeks were very pink. Beside her, Urahara was laughing behind his fan, raising the tokkuri to refill everybody’s cups again. “Come sit with me!” Driving her shoulder painfully into Urahara’s side, she scooted him over far enough to make an extra space on her right, dragging the spare zabuton into place for him to sit on.

For a moment, Ichigo stared. Urahara, Rukia, Tessai and Grimmjow sitting around a low table, all apparently a little bit smashed off sake. Grimmjow was seated on the floor between Tessai and Urahara, looking moody and maybe like he didn’t want to be there at all. There was a ruddy tint to his cheeks though that said he’d probably stayed for the alcohol. Reclined back on one elbow, out of his gigai and sprawling on the mats, he took up one third of the table space with his rude stretch of limbs. He didn’t spare Ichigo much of a glance, and what he did receive was a little mutinous.

Damn, Ichigo thought before he could rein it in. Damn it. Ururu had been right. So had Urahara. He shouldn’t have given Grimmjow time to stew on that night, which was exactly what he’d done. Warily, he made his way over to the spot Rukia had cleared for him, watching as she dragged snacks from the table closer to where he was sitting. Urahara was already hastily pouring him a drink, sliding the small ceramic cup in his direction, while Tessai patted his back as he sat down, the lenses of his glasses glinting in a friendly sort of way. Mostly it was hard to tell.

“Are we celebrating something?” Ichigo asked, feeling a little thrown off balance. Carefully, he removed his swords and placed them behind him, against the wall. “What’s the news?” He took the cup between his fingers but didn’t drink, feeling a bit awkward with all the nice attention he was receiving. It somehow made Grimmjow’s stony reserve seem even colder.

“Captain-Commander Kyouraku has formally approved my initiative to forge ties with Las Noches via a two-envoy system,” Rukia said importantly, though she was sparkling with good humour and didn’t even yowl when Urahara patted her back in congratulations. The eyes she turned to Ichigo were bright and warm. “They just want a meet and greet first to make sure it’s all in everyone’s best interests and not, you know, a horrible trap set up by one of the arrancar abominations to undermine Soul Society.” She looked across the table and batted her eyelashes. “No offence, Grimmjow.”

“Fuck off, tic tac.”

“Now now,” Urahara said with a small laugh, waving his hand at Grimmjow, “this is mutually beneficial for both sides! But Soul Society only recently accepted the vizard back into their ranks, and the arrancar openly fought for Aizen. Trust takes time and that’s why Kyouraku is requesting a meeting. Diplomatic relations don’t happen overnight.” Despite his calming words, Ichigo saw there was something bordering on pure mischief in Urahara’s shadowed grey eyes as he looked at Grimmjow. “You aren’t afraid to go, are you Grimmjow-san?”

From his reclined position, Grimmjow reached over and shotted his entire cup of sake.

“Told you to cut out the honorifics. Arrancar abomination, remember, Kisuke?” The cup landed back on the table with a small clatter. Grimmjow looked over at Ichigo with a sudden cut of his gaze, narrow-eyed and unfriendly. “And I never signed on to be Soul Society’s bitch. Hear the position’s already filled.”

Oh, so it was that old song again. Ichigo the errand boy of Soul Society and Grimmjow, broody mistake of nature. He was getting really tired of that bullshit being dredged up just because Grimmjow had attitude about his place in the food chain. Besides, Ichigo liked Soul Society’s shinigami. It wasn’t something he would ever be ashamed of. Picking up his own sake cup, Ichigo dryly toasted him from across the table.

“Better a bitch than a stray.”

Grimmjow bared his teeth slightly. “Some of us don’t want the leash.”

Ichigo glanced around the room. “The collar seems to fit you pretty well.”

The snarl that emanated from the other side of the table was more than just a response to a verbal barb. On Ichigo’s left, Rukia stirred uneasily. Urahara just sighed and exchanged a look with Tessai, and Ichigo, well he just took an easy sip of his sake like there was absolutely nothing wrong. Nobody could tell his stomach was clenched like a fist.

“You know, you were supposed to come here and help convince Grimmjow to visit Soul Society, not start a fight,” came a faintly amused quip from the other side of the room. Ichigo knew that weirdly masculine voice. “If you destroy the house I’ll scratch your balls off.” In a flicker of black fur Yoruichi was sitting neatly in his lap, golden eyes ringing liquid black pupils. Ichigo had only about two seconds to absorb that even in feline form he still had a shinigami woman almost sitting on his dick, and then she’d turned away to knead at his thigh with determined motions. Figuring it would be rude to throw her through the shoji doors, he mostly just tried not to grunt in irritation at her pinprick claws and took another sip of his sake.

“Don’t know how I’m supposed to do that,” Ichigo said. “Or why. Nel could probably vouch for me in Las Noches if Grimmjow’s too much of a pussy to stand before the Gotei 13.” Rukia tried to smother her snort at that but failed miserably. Offended by the cat joke, Yoruichi gave him a flat glare and settled herself bonelessly in his lap, her chin resting on his calf. Ichigo gave her an apologetic pat on the head, which she surprisingly did not shred him for.

Grimmjow was sitting up by that point, one knee raised in his casual style. There was nothing of the wicked humour and attraction in his eyes then, just a flat kind of disdain. Ichigo didn’t care—he didn’t. If Grimmjow couldn’t get over Soul Society, if he couldn’t get past Ichigo’s ties to it there was no point in continuing whatever they had going on. He couldn’t just gouge out an important part of his life because Grimmjow had classist issues over his own existence.

“I ain’t scared of the fuckin’ shinigami, I just don’t give a shit about this whole plan.” His twist of a smile was nasty. “They can crumble for all I care. Kurosaki’s the one crying rivers over reishi, not me.”

“If Hueco Mundo gets invaded again—” Rukia started, but Grimmjow rode straight over her argument.

“Then a shitload of hollows die, right? Who cares?” he scoffed. “All it means is you assholes have to balance your books upstairs and have a little cull of your own.” His eyes glinted. “I hear you’ve got enough slums that nobody would miss a few thousand souls.”

The table fell silent. Even Urahara’s eyes lowered a little. He snapped his fan shut quietly and laid it beside him, turning back to give Ichigo a surprisingly severe look. Fix it, he seemed to be saying. Why he couldn’t just manipulate Grimmjow like he did everyone else was a mystery to Ichigo. He was a master of it, after all.

“Nobody is asking you to do this for Soul Society,” Ichigo said tiredly. “It’s just a temporary trade-off so we can all go back to minding our own business.” This time when he met Grimmjow’s eyes, he couldn’t even summon the urge to zing him with an insult. “Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to see another shinigami as long as you lived? No more meddling, no more gigai, and Las Noches gets all the fortifications it needs.” If Grimmjow was truly set on his shinigami-hating course, if he was done with Ichigo, then dangling a carrot like that was the only other thing he could think to use. All because Ichigo opened his stupid mouth and made Grimmjow think he saw him as some kind of—abomination. That was the word he’d coined off Rukia. And Ichigo hadn’t managed to fix it like he thought he had.

At his offer, something shifted in Grimmjow’s expression, bitter and closed off though it was. Ichigo liked to think it might have been a flicker of indecision, but it was more likely it was just anger.

“You mean, wouldn’t it be nice if the hollows stayed on their own turf?” Grimmjow said finally, tapping his cup in Urahara’s direction for a refill. “Wouldn’t it be nice if they all just fuckin’ went home?”

“ _No._ ” His emphatic response surprised even himself a little. In the corner of his eye, he saw Rukia blink up at him. “No, I don’t want that.” Knowing all eyes were on him, Ichigo still couldn’t find it in himself to hesitate. There was something wavering in Grimmjow’s cold stare. “But I thought maybe you did.”

Ichigo refused to be embarrassed as the silence turned speculative, despite knowing his ears were turning pink at the tips and everyone could probably see. So what if Urahara and Tessai figured it out? So what if Rukia did? Grimmjow was finally seeming to thaw, the chilling disdain melting out of his expression. The set of his shoulders unwound slightly. Then, he looked away from Ichigo’s level gaze, like maybe his misgivings couldn’t hold up under it.

“Nah,” Grimmjow said to his refilled cup. When he looked up again, the corner of his mouth was curled in a wry sort of smirk. “Never that.”

The relief Ichigo felt released a pressure in his chest so tight it seemed to make his ribs creak. He couldn’t have stopped his smile if he tried, and really, he didn’t. Grimmjow took one look at it and suddenly decided his cup was really interesting, draining most of it in one long throat-bobbing gulp that Ichigo definitely didn’t focus his full attention on.

“Can you please not drink my good sake like that?” Urahara pleaded into the silence, completely breaking the mood. “I was trying to get you drunk enough to agree. If we’ve achieved that, I’m cutting you off.”

“Maybe I’m still thinkin’ about it,” Grimmjow said stubbornly. Long fingers pushed his cup back to Urahara, who looked like he’d truly dug his own grave. “So keep persuading me, you stingy asshole.” While Urahara was giving Grimmjow a long-suffering glare, Rukia took advantage of his distraction to swipe the bottle and refill her own cup, completely ignoring etiquette. She did, however, top up Ichigo’s as well. Tessai just put up a restraining hand when she turned to him, apparently quite happy being the silent observer of the table as Grimmjow and Urahara started arguing about how little he did for the household.

“I’m glad you’ve got a friend down here,” Rukia stage-whispered to Ichigo, but she was kind of drunk so it was more like a breathy yell. “But you know he’s crazy, right?” They both looked up in time for Grimmjow to launch himself at Urahara, catching him in the throat with a hard forearm and driving his face into the mats. His striped hat went flying like a frisbee, hitting the wall with a dull thunk. Urahara retaliated with one of kidou’s greatest hits, a two-finger shot of reiryoku that hauled Grimmjow’s arms behind his own back. Neither of them had their swords, Ichigo realised, watching them scrap about like morons. They were both clearly just messing around. Then Grimmjow shattered the kidou and drove his fist under Urahara’s ribs. Or maybe not? But Tessai was still calmly sipping his sake, so whatever.

“Definitely crazy,” Ichigo agreed. “But I think I could use a bit more crazy in my life.” Rukia rolled her eyes at his faint smile, then punched him in the arm like she couldn’t quite understand, but accepted that Ichigo was just one huge bag of contradictions. He’d deny that, himself: if he hated every person who’d tried to attack or kill him he’d have hardly any friends at all. So he sat and watched Urahara and Grimmjow have their stupid fight, until Grimmjow got Urahara by his sandy hair and yanked, catching an elbow straight in the side of his mouth for his troubles.

“I can’t wait for you to leave, ingrate,” Urahara said, massaging his scalp with both hands. Grimmjow gave him the finger and dabbed at his mouth with his other hand. It wasn’t bleeding, but it looked like it had hurt. Ichigo watched Rukia push the sake bottle across the table to Grimmjow when he re-settled in his place. It was as close to a friendly overture as she’d probably get, Ichigo figured, and was strangely proud of her.

A rumbling purr interrupted Ichigo’s thoughts, and he looked down at his lap to realise he’d been absent-mindedly petting Yoruichi in long strokes while she lay across his lap. She hadn’t even raised her head at the commotion. Pausing for a second, he wondered if it was one of those weird lines in the sand he shouldn’t have crossed. Was it the same as touching a woman when the woman was a cat? He didn’t really think it counted, since Yoruichi wouldn’t get into his lap in her usual form. Well, probably. Settling it in his mind, Ichigo gingerly petted her from the nape of her neck to the base of her tail. She was incredibly silky, sort of nice really. She gusted out an enormous purr that bordered on a whine and didn’t even open her eyes. Ichigo stared. He’d never thought of Yoruichi as adorable before.

Urahara cleared his throat politely. “Ah, Kurosaki-san?”

“Huh?” Ichigo glanced up to find Urahara darting his eyes over at Grimmjow, who was—oh. Jaw tight and eyes slitted, Grimmjow was glaring at Yoruichi like he was pondering just how much damage a point-blank cero would do to her if he had the element of surprise. The look he levelled at Ichigo was murderous.

“Is it a cat thing?” Ichigo asked mildly, trying not to betray his jangling nerves. It was too soon for another fight to break out, surely. “You know, because you’re sort of—”

“You say I’m a pussy again Kurosaki and I swear to fuck I will gut you with your own sword.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Ichigo insisted, but by then his mouth was twitching and he couldn’t stop it. Grimmjow’s face darkened even further. “I wasn’t!” He inhaled a fortifying breath, trying to pull it together. “Completely serious here.” He even put both hands on the table, taking a fortifying sip of his sake. It didn’t taste that expensive really. Maybe Urahara was just a cheapskate. “Anyway, the meeting with Soul Society: you’re in, right?”

At that, Rukia straightened, subtly tugging her sleeves into place and finishing her cup. Her dark eyes were intent and expectant at she looked at Grimmjow. This whole thing was kind of her baby, from what Ichigo had gathered, and easily the kind of thing that looked good for a captain promotion one day. He didn’t know if that was her goal, but knowing her relationship with Byakuya it was probably high on the list. All she needed was for Grimmjow to play ball.

Looking irritated by all the attention, Grimmjow just hunched his shoulders and scowled at them for a moment, until his anger melted into mild resentment as his eyes lit on Ichigo. The corner of his mouth was starting to bruise a little, and he pushed the tip of his tongue against the injury. The point of a canine tooth flashed in a quick grin as he noticed Ichigo noticing. Shit.

“Guess we can postpone our weekly sessions to go into the light.” He lifted his chin. “What do you say, Kurosaki? You look like you’d make a shitty tour guide, but whatever.”

“Pass,” Ichigo said automatically, trying for nonchalance. “I’m only going if we get to try the leash thing.”

“I’ll kill you,” was the flat reply. But the laughing glint in Grimmjow’s eyes was back, and Ichigo was doing a really shitty job of holding down his smile. Then of course Rukia had to ruin the entire thing.

“I’m sorry, but Ichigo wasn’t actually…” She trailed off as everyone looked at her, her expression suddenly wretched. Grimmjow’s good humour evaporated. Urahara just watched carefully. Ichigo wasn’t immediately quite sure what was going on. Fortifying herself, she said in a rush, “Ichigo wasn’t invited to Soul Society. This time. My orders are only for Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.”

In the grand story of Ichigo’s life, it probably rated pretty low on the list of shocking occurrences, but he still felt like he’d been winded. Why was he surprised? It made sense, really. They knew they could trust him, they didn’t need a meeting and Grimmjow definitely didn’t need a keeper. Rukia would be going with him. Ichigo didn’t—wasn’t needed for this. It was fine. He’d been invited down to convince Grimmjow to agree, and he’d done that. Blinking, Ichigo pulled in a slow breath and told himself fiercely to get over it.

“No problem,” Ichigo shrugged. Reaching into his lap, he carefully lifted Yoruichi out and passed her into Tessai’s big hands. “I guess it’s getting late, so I’ll head home before Kon causes any trouble.” He made sure to smile at Rukia, who looked genuinely distraught at having perpetuated the misunderstanding. It wasn’t her fault. “Keep me up to date with it all.”

Getting to his feet, Ichigo concentrated on the stiffness of his legs as he grabbed his swords and slid them back into place. He wanted to look at Grimmjow, but he didn’t know if he wanted to see the mockery that’d be written all over him. He loved nothing more than rubbing Ichigo’s face in his inessential status in Soul Society’s eyes. So he let his hair hide his eyes as he said his easy goodbyes to them all, just trying to get the hell out of there before his smile cracked.

Ichigo made it out to the gravel expanse that served as an entry path in record time, faintly hoping that they remembered to re-bolt the door after him. There he finally slowed his walk, swallowed up by the black shadows that gathered around the front of the shop. The sigh he exhaled seemed to shudder out of him.

Disappointment didn’t really cover it. He’d come running down on such a high just to be expected to placate Grimmjow, like he was a kid having some kind of tantrum. The hell did that make Ichigo? His babysitter? Maybe they really were just pawns to Soul Society, briefly useful and then put away again. Maybe Grimmjow had been right all along. Scrubbing his hands over his face roughly, shoving his hair back out of his eyes, Ichigo sucked in a huge breath of crisp night air and thought, _fuck it._

“Oy, Kurosaki,” a voice hissed from the doorway behind him, and then Grimmjow was walking in step with him like he’d been there all along. Whatever those kidou barriers were for, they weren’t for him. “You pissed at me again?”

“Depends.” Ichigo gave a jerky shrug. “How hard did you laugh after I left? I must have looked pretty stupid in there.”

“Didn’t laugh at all. I told ‘em to get fucked,” Grimmjow said. The hand that gripped Ichigo’s shoulder was fever-hot. Or maybe he was just cold. “I said it before, did I? There’s no point if—look, I said I wasn’t doin’ it.” The hand became an entire arm slung around his shoulders. They’d stopped walking, turning it into an incidental half-hug. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, former sixth espada of Aizen’s arrancar army, was trying to make him feel better. If he wasn’t so damn warm Ichigo probably could have shoved him away and said he was fine. Instead he stood there under the clasping mantle of his arm and felt like a massive idiot.

“Shit,” Grimmjow swore as Ichigo suddenly turned in toward his body, sliding his hands around a hard, tapering waist and linking his hands behind his back, just over the void beneath his shirt where the hollow hole was. Ignoring the tension under his hands, Ichigo tucked his nose into the space at the base of Grimmjow’s jaw and breathed the scent of clean soap and sake, soaking up the feral heat that almost steamed off his skin. He’d been warm like that the night in the park too, radiating it like a furnace. Maybe if he’d reached out then they wouldn’t have parted so badly.

Slowly, hands lifted and pressed against his back, more exploratory than anything. They pressed their way down over his spine and the back of his ribcage, sliding between Zangetsu’s bandages and his uniform. Ichigo felt Grimmjow release a long breath through his nose, then press it into Ichigo’s hair. The mask was hard against the side of his head, but Ichigo didn’t mind at all.

“You crying or something?”

Ichigo snorted loudly. It must have buzzed against Grimmjow’s ear because he tried to rub it on Ichigo’s forehead. The questing hands on his back turned into forearms that crossed over each other, holding him in place.

“What’s the point of this?” Grimmjow asked finally. “I’m not complaining, but if you’re not gonna kiss me I don’t see the point of just standing here hangin’ on.”

Ichigo rolled his eyes unseen. All he could see were shifting strands of blue and the muted streetlights down the road.

“You’re a lot warmer than Yoruichi was.” That earned him an angry mutter. Ichigo’s fingers idly circled the rim of Grimmjow’s hollow hole through his shirt. It felt as hot as the rest of him, and just as alive. Well, relatively speaking. Pushing against the fabric, he tucked his fingertips just barely inside it and pressed. “You know, you were right that night: I don’t know much about hollows, other than how to kill them.”

“Great job you’re doing of that right now.” The words were dry, but there was a huff of a laugh caught in there.

“You know what I mean. Don’t be a dick.” Pulling away suddenly, Ichigo reached up to grab Grimmjow’s biceps through his jacket. The night felt freezing away from his skin. “Can you do me a favour and go to Soul Society anyway? Forget the stuff that happened inside, I think this is our best shot at settling both sides after everything that’s gone on.”

Grimmjow didn’t blink. “No. Fuck ‘em.”

“But it’s for a good cause!”

“Do I look like I give a shit?”

Ichigo thought fast. “I’d owe you one.”

“I don’t want you in my fuckin’ debt. What kind of sick bastard are you?”

“Wh—?! So there’s nothing I can say,” Ichigo said, refusing to believe it. “There’s nothing you want and nothing I can do to make you go without me.”

“Not a damn thing,” Grimmjow said, like maybe he was brain-damaged. “Do you think I just say shit for fun?”

Ichigo stared at him in pure frustration and disbelief. Such an asshole, he thought ferociously—and dipped in close to press a kiss to Grimmjow’s cheek. Well, not his cheek. Ichigo aimed directly for his sharp-toothed broken mask, pressing a line of quick kisses to the remnants of his hollow form, feeling it crack open and close again as Grimmjow tried to control some kind of reaction.

“You know I can’t feel a damn thing through the mask,” Grimmjow said finally as Ichigo drew away. His eyes were blue-black in the darkness, but the green estigma stood out beneath them, giving his eyes a slight tilt. So Ichigo thought what the hell, and leaned up to kiss those too; pressing his lips carefully to the corners of widened eyes. It didn’t feel any different to the rest of his skin, just as evenly warm and smooth as the hollow hole, or the soft corners of his mouth. Ichigo thought about kissing those too, but he was bruising up after Urahara’s hit. Also, overkill. Grimmjow was already staring at him in stunned silence. Slowly, he let his hands fall away until they stood apart. He was a little glad for the darkness then.

“So, uh,” Ichigo coughed a little, “thanks for sticking up for me.”

“But you still want me to go to Soul Society.” There was no question in Grimmjow’s voice. Ichigo shook his head.

“Not if you’re set against it. There’s gotta be some way around it. Maybe they can come here, since it’s important to them—”

“I’ll go.” Grimmjow exhaled harshly. “I killed that Sternritter, didn’t I? And I’m easily fuckin’ captain class by now. I won’t bow to those fuckers, but,” he seemed to struggle for a moment, hands flying out at his sides, “there’s hardly anything left of Las Noches anymore. It meant something to the hollow before Aizen moved in and put up his fuckin’ sunlight illusions and tried to pretend it wasn’t anything like it was. These days it’s half rubble and old bones.”

Again, that tone, that buried pride in a place Ichigo had really only looked at like it was enemy territory. It still was, but—hollow never chose to become what they did. The closest he’d come to hating a hollow was Grand Fisher, and he was a few years dead. According to his dad, he hadn’t been taken to hell either. Just another fallen spirit who’d never done true wrong in life. It felt vile, but he’d committed his own sins when trapped behind an alabaster white mask. Who the hell was he to judge?

“So let’s fix it,” Ichigo said, crossing his arms. “Kyouraku isn’t stupid, he won’t expect you to grovel and play nice. He just wants you to be honest. So, you go to Soul Society, and I’ll…be here when you get back, I guess.” It was galling, but if he was going to be a tag-along anyway there wasn’t much point in going. His chance would just have to come later once Grimmjow proved himself to be something other than an old enemy to Soul Society. Rukia could handle his bad temper, and for all his angry bluster and aversion to shinigami Grimmjow did want to get something out of it all.

“Fuck this,” Grimmjow said at length, sounding like he was getting a headache. “Fine. Let’s do it before I decide to crack Urahara’s head like an egg.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“Nothin’ probably. I just want to kill him sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

After they walked back inside, things happened pretty quickly. Ichigo mostly stood there like a pencil the entire time and watched Rukia give Grimmjow a stern run-down of things he couldn’t do (picking fights, swearing at the captains, wanton destruction of property, killing anyone at all and most importantly, disrespecting her brother) while Urahara fanned himself and smiled indulgently, his hat firmly back in place. Tessai stood with Yoruichi curled like a baby in his arms, still sleeping in her cat form. Ichigo didn’t know what cats did that made them always tired, but it looked like she wasn’t immune to it.

Grimmjow bore the entire thing with ill grace and a scowl, but actually managed to hold his tongue. He did shoot Ichigo a few speaking glances through the lecture though. Finally, Rukia told him he had to leave his sword behind. It went about as well as anyone would expect.

“You’re going there as an envoy,” Rukia said in exasperation. “And this is just a proper introductory meeting! Who are you planning to stab?”

“You, if you try to make me leave Pantera with these assholes,” Grimmjow spat. “Shitty gnome, I might as well leave my arm behind.” The argument that broke out was predictable, loud and full of cursing. Ichigo half-wished he’d brought some popcorn and his phone to film it. It occurred to him that he could probably calm them both down a little, but also…nah.

“Fine,” Rukia finally snapped, the pink in her cheeks more anger than sake by then. “Keep the fucking sword! Hide it up your ass!”

Ichigo’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline. He’d never heard Rukia swear before. Was that the Grimmjow effect in full swing? Something about him did make swearing seem like a valid option, especially when he was being a stubborn bastard. Giving her his nastiest, sharpest smile of satisfaction, Grimmjow adjusted his sloping belt and rested a hand on the pommel of his sword. Rukia, barely as tall as his breastbone, looked like she wanted to freeze him solid and smash the remains. Their formal meet and greet was going to end well, obviously. Ichigo couldn’t find it in himself to feel sorry about it, actually getting a small kernel of petty enjoyment out of knowing Grimmjow was going to raise holy hell—and still probably manage to get the approval of a few of the captains. Kenpachi, for one. He liked a little fire in his intruders. Maybe they could bond over the times they each sliced Ichigo to pieces.

Finally, Rukia turned and opened the senkaimon against the wide wall of Urahara’s own shoji doors, sheathing her sword as the white light poured into the room, almost blinding as the doors to Soul Society slid soundlessly open. Ichigo couldn’t quite help the pang of nostalgia it gave him, and he looked away in time to catch Grimmjow’s eyes.

“Try not to destroy the place,” Ichigo said, swallowing. “They get kinda mad if you break stuff.”

“Voice of experience, huh?”

“Definitely.”

Grimmjow gave a small snort of laughter. The hand that clenched his shoulder was brash and friendly; the fingers that dragged over the bare slope of his neck as he pulled away were not. Ichigo’s breath stuttered in his throat a little.

“Good luck.”

“Don’t need it. See you in a few.”

“Yeah.”

Grimmjow strode into the glaring white light like he did it every single day of his life, hands jammed in his pockets, elbows proudly jutting back as he sauntered clean into Soul Society. Rukia followed with a put-upon sigh, giving Ichigo a telling look before she had to jog to catch up to him, yelling for him to wait before he walked into a ditch somewhere. The doors slammed shut on them like that, sharp and final, and faded into the sudden gloom. Ichigo blinked away the spots staining his vision, trying not to feel the tight flutter of abandonment he was steadfastly ignoring.

“Finally,” Yoruichi croaked, and leaped out of Tessai’s arms in a flash of light, landing on all four brown, smooth-skinned limbs. Her long hair was loose, managing to obscure her breasts and not much else. She looked tired, but she was smiling at Ichigo in a way that he knew by then meant trouble for him. “Thanks for the nap, Ichigo. Surveying Hueco Mundo takes it out of you.”

“I wasn’t sure Grimmjow would agree, Kurosaki-san. Well done! As ever, you manage to do the impossible.” Urahara tugged his haori off his shoulders and gave it to Yoruichi. His shadowed gaze was his usual mixture of dumb amiability and secrets, giving nothing away. “I think this gives us…oh, what do you think, Tessai?”

“Two days at most, unless Captain Kurotsuchi wants to delay Grimmjow’s departure,” Tessai said, his moustache twitching. “I’m not sure it’s enough time.”

“Ichigo can do it.” Yoruichi was resolute. And Ichigo…

“Did you guys set this whole thing up?” he asked helplessly, knowing the answer and hating himself for even asking by that point.

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, certainly!” Urahara snapped his fan open to hide what was probably a laugh. “Kurosaki-san, did you really think we’d leave you out? How mean.”

“I hate you all,” Ichigo said flatly. “What the hell do you want me for?” They’d orchestrated to get Grimmjow out of the way and keep him busy, which could only mean one of two things. Either it was a trap for Grimmjow, or they knew he’d interfere in something they wanted done. And that…really left only one thing in mind.

Urahara’s eyes were brilliant and agate grey, even through the shadows cast over his face.

“The arrancar queen of Hueco Mundo, Tier Harribel, has extended her personal invitation to the shinigami substitute, Kurosaki Ichigo.” The fan slid shut again, revealing Urahara’s triumphant smile.

“Las Noches is finally willing to discuss terms.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey look, plot
> 
> tbh the response to this fic has been so good it's got me living rn. thanks so much for commenting and kudos...ing and talking about it on tumblr. i'm new to writing this ship even if i'm kinda old to bleach so even the 'i liked it!' comments are gold ok don't let anyone tell you different


	11. Chapter 11

It took approximately thirty seconds after their explanations for Ichigo to realise, process and then unreservedly believe that Urahara had been working an angle from the shadows the entire time. It was an almost identical plan to the one Rukia had concocted herself, only with two notable differences.

The first was that they wanted Ichigo to be the go-between to Las Noches, and Grimmjow to be the Soul Society element. Trust exercises. A visible face—or a visible broken mask for them, and a black-garbed shinigami with a zanpakutou who wouldn’t strike the hollow without due cause.

The second, more important difference was that they wanted exclusive access to a deposit of pure crystallised reishi so concentrated and difficult to get to, not even the hollow could feed off it. Yoruichi had been surveying it, scanning it and sending information back to Urahara about it for days without rest. It sure explained the exhausted lap nap from earlier. In exchange Urahara would personally—and outside Soul Society’s probable terms—build them a kidou barrier that could shield the entirety of Las Noches the same way Soul Society was protected by the sekkiseki, the stone wall that repelled reiryoku. It had to be a forbidden or undiscovered kidou technique, but to get that crystal reishi Urahara was offering it off the books.

It was a black market deal, getting in before Soul Society could and they wanted Ichigo to facilitate it.

“Why?” Ichigo said to the ceiling of Urahara’s living space, sprawled like a black starfish in his shihakushou. “Why go to these lengths for the crystal reishi? What will you use it for?”

“Nothing nefarious, Kurosaki-san,” Urahara said gently. “But it’s not in Soul Society’s current interests, and they still don’t know this deposit exists.”

“I thought you just wanted Grimmjow to defeat Harribel.”

Yoruichi laughed at that, not even bothering to close the haori over her chest as she bent over Ichigo’s prone form from behind, grinning down at his face. “Ichigo, that was just the spark to get you both thinking our way. Grimmjow doesn’t really want to be the king of Las Noches. He just wants to fight you until the sunset of his days.”

“Yes…fighting,” Urahara said, in a tone of long-suffering patience. “The point is, Kurosaki-san, we need you to obtain our agreement before any other that Soul Society might offer, and we have only two days to do it.”

“So why do it without Grimmjow? Why leave him out of it?”

Yoruichi leaned down until her slanted golden eyes filled his vision. “Don’t worry, Ichigo. He’s just a very bright blue flame to catch the eye of the Gotei 13. He’s trustworthy, but right now, he’s the firecracker to piss Soul Society off while you slip into the black undetected.”

“And why me? Yoruichi, you’ve already been there.”

“Strength and restraint count for equal measures in Las Noches. Harribel won’t just break bread with strength, so to speak. She wants character, and right now, she’s more curious about you than Grimmjow. So we put you both where you’re best placed to play to your own strengths. Destruction, and chaos of the natural order. Soul Society and Hueco Mundo.” She leaned down until her forehead touched his chin, and her breath was humid against his eyelids. “Ichigo. This one’s important.”

It was on the tip of Ichigo’s tongue to demand the details, to push and pry and force answers out of them until he could make an informed decision, if they needed him so badly. But Yoruichi’s upside-down eyes were steady and clear on his, and he’d never known her to lie when it really counted. If they didn’t want to tell him, then maybe it was better he didn’t know. He hated the deceit, but Urahara and Yoruichi had never really used their secrets to hurt him. And they weren’t Soul Society where it counted. They weren’t going to use him, not in the way he feared right down in the pit of his stomach.

“Could you give me a bit of personal space?” Ichigo said eventually, frowning up at Yoruichi, which was kind of hard since she was approximately two inches from his face and upside down. Her response was to stretch her body forward a little and drop, smothering Ichigo in the valley of her cleavage. “God damn it.” Laughter was the only response he got.

“You don’t blush anymore, Ichigo.” Her tone was vast with approval. “It’s not quite as fun, though.”

“They’re just not that great,” he grunted, shoving her up with both hands so he could breathe. “You still take your pants off before your jacket?” More laughter, and a rough hand scruffing up his hair in friendly amusement. When he had his freedom he sat up slowly, still full of misgivings but more curious than anything. Also if he was honest…it was sort of exciting. Hueco Mundo. It had been a few years since he’d been there, and this time it wasn’t going to be a fight or die scenario. Well, hopefully not. With the urgency gone and no true enemies to spring out with swords drawn, it would just be the dark desert wasteland of hollowkind.

It would just be Grimmjow’s home.

The thought gave Ichigo an unexpectedly guilty pang, sharp and almost ashamed. But it was an entire world, he told himself reasonably, and it wasn’t like he was intruding without cause. Besides, he could see Nel again, and meet Harribel for real. They’d passed each other by almost entirely since Aizen’s rise to power and the Wandenreich’s subjugation that came after it. He’d never heard much about her, but from all accounts she was level-headed and brutally efficient in a way that put Ichigo in mind of Byakuya. She seemed like she’d be the absolute opposite of Grimmjow. And she was the queen of Las Noches, and Hueco Mundo by extension. Not some usurper like Aizen. A true hollow, no matter how she’d been made arrancar for his ends. From what Grimmjow had told him, the strongest ruled in Hueco Mundo. She was the top of the food chain, by tooth and claw and sword.

Ichigo wanted to meet her.

He looked across at Urahara and Tessai, at their pleasant and expectant faces. He looked at Yoruichi, who gave him that familiar broad half-smile of hers.

“All right,” he said honestly, “I’ll do it.”

“Excellent!” Urahara’s fan snapped shut. “You’ll leave tonight via the bunker’s garganta. I took the liberty of texting Isshin in advance about your absence. He says to…” Urahara pulled out his phone, “scrub yourself down with sand every once in a while to exfoliate and keep clean, because Masaki didn’t raise any filthy children.”

“He didn’t.” Ichigo grabbed the phone and scanned the message thread. He really had. “Why didn’t he shut you down? I thought Dad wanted me staying under his barrier and away from you.”

“Oh, that’s just the test barrier we had Isshin put up,” Urahara shrugged. “He locked us out of it when I suggested Yuzu-chan could come work for us when I eventually turn this place into a maid cafe. You too, Kurosaki-san! There must be something on the menu for every appetite.” He sounded so blase about it that Ichigo couldn’t honestly tell if it was bullshit or not. He handed the phone back with a frown.

“So that’s the same type of barrier you wanted to put up around Las Noches? Something shinigami couldn’t break into?” Rukia had found the back door Isshin had set with the injury thing, but if that hadn’t been an option, could they have gotten in at all? “How come I could get in and out of it?”

“We keyed it that way with some of your blood I kept stored,” Yoruichi said, crossing her arms. Ichigo blinked. “You never know when we might need to clone you or grow a dummy gigai for you. I like to keep things Kisuke can use later. Isshin did the rest. We gave him our blood for entry but he used it to lock us out.”

That all seemed like good, important information. And still.

“Clone me? Are you normal?!”

Golden eyes rolled a little. “It was a joke, Ichigo.” When he relaxed, Yoruichi added, “We’d need a lot more than a drop of blood for that. Now come on, the bunker is waiting.”

Feeling a little like he was being led by the nose for the entire night, Ichigo followed them down to the back storeroom ladder. He wondered if there was really such a thing as free will and making your own decisions anymore. It didn’t seem like it when Urahara and Yoruichi were involved. Usually they were way more subtle, and at least twice as lighthearted. Was this special reishi that important to them? What could they make with it? Hollow mostly just absorbed it, and Quincy made their weapons from it. Since the Wandenreich were over and done with, shinigami were the ones who usually forged it into things that could wholesale devastate or create. Urahara wasn’t a warmonger though. Did he think the Gotei 13 would attempt to take it if they knew it was there? Pure reishi, solid, crystal energy left undisturbed in Hueco Mundo for thousands of years. The type of thing Kurotsuchi Mayuri would have wet dreams about.

Maybe it was best left in Urahara’s hands, Ichigo thought. Better the mad scientist he knew, and all that. He trudged through the dirt toward the old garganta framework Urahara had used back when Inoue had been taken, and looked up at the wooden posts jutting out of the twin boulders. He felt like he needed more prep, or something. He’d been drinking sake half an hour ago and hugging an awkward arrancar, and now he was going to Hueco Mundo.

Urahara leapt up to the left-hand frame and started jumping up and down on it in his geta, testing its durability. Some dirt rained down. “I’m sure it’s still fine!” he called down cheerfully. “They only explode and kill everybody after the tenth activation, I think.”

“Stop pissing about, Kisuke,” Yoruichi said flatly. There were still tired shadows beneath her eyes, Ichigo noticed.

“How come Aizen never looked for this crystal? It could have solved his problems with the hougyoku.”

Yoruichi gave him a quick, sharp glance. “Aizen never thought much of Hueco Mundo beyond what he could see and use for his own ends. He was kind of a snob, really, and natural resources probably seemed limited to him.” Her mouth drew down slightly. “Ichigo, this deposit isn’t what you’d expect. We wouldn’t have even found it if Kisuke hadn’t developed a device to scan for pockets of concealed reishi. It’s completely sealed inside a mountain of stone, and it’s—” Her arms crossed over her middle. Ichigo realised with a start that the eyes she turned to him weren’t tired at all, but something else. “I felt small around it. Its presence beat inside my head like a heart.”

Despite the bunker being temperature controlled to the finest degree, Ichigo felt the chill in her memory crawl up his spine.

“Is it alive? Could that be possible?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get that close.” An elbow drove into his side. “We want you to check it out.”

“Hell no,” Ichigo said starkly. “That sounds like something out of a horror movie. Didn’t you ever hear about Pandora’s Box? I think the moral of the story was don’t open the damn box.”

“If we don’t, you know who eventually will.” Yoruichi’s expression was grim. Reaching out to Tessai, he wordlessly passed Yoruichi a small flip-phone. Painfully outdated by modern technology standards, it was emblazoned with a familiar flaming skull on the back. “Take this with you, Ichigo. It’s got a rough map in it, and we can use it to communicate with you from here. Unfortunately it’s pretty basic, so texting will probably be the best we can get from it. Anything more than short bursts and Soul Society will probably pick up the signal. That could mean trouble for Grimmjow, so use it sparingly.”

“Grimmjow?” Ichigo said sharply. “Let me guess: because you set him up as your decoy and if they get wind of me in Hueco Mundo they’ll imprison him?”

“More like kill him.” Ichigo’s chest froze. “Or not. It’s hard to tell which way the wind blows since Kyouraku took the helm. But Grimmjow is still an ex-espada, and if they smell treachery they won’t hesitate. To them, he has no value.” Clapping a hand to Ichigo’s shoulder, she pushed back when he tried to return the phone. “You must go and find out what this reishi is, Ichigo. You’ve probably got enough strength in you to weather its onslaught once you get in. Kenpachi might, and Aizen probably could have, but we don’t have them as options.”

“Probably? So I might die?” Ichigo half-yelled. Did these people actually think they were sane? “And if I call for help, Grimmjow might die? Why can’t you people just do this shit on your own without involving us?”

A hand clasped his other shoulder, heavy and huge over his white shoulder-guard. Tessai’s entire demeanour was built for gravity and importance, but Ichigo looked up at him and for once caught the actual drilling intensity of his gaze behind his lenses.

“It’s hidden, and that frightens us.” Tessai didn’t mince words. “Aizen didn’t find it. No hollow even senses it. We had to use sonar to find it after the reishi scanners started spitting out white noise. Soul Society needs the trade alliance as much as Hueco Mundo, but if they scan for reishi and find it…”

“They open Pandora’s Box,” Ichigo said, shrugging off both hands. They felt like anvils weighing him down. “I get it. Get off me. I said I’d go and I will, but don’t do this anymore. If you want me to do something, just ask. Give me all the information and then ask me.” He looked down at the phone still in his hand. Signals from it could be detected by Soul Society in uninterrupted streams, like a voice call. If they identified them, Grimmjow could be detained or even executed. Ichigo was pretty sure Rukia wouldn’t let it come to that without going through due process, after her own personal experiences with sudden and rapid acceleration of things like that. But—and he didn’t want to think it—Rukia was still a shinigami, and she didn’t like Grimmjow. Which meant that phone was going up the sleeve of his shihakushou and wasn’t coming out for the entire time he was on hollow turf.

Squinting up at the kidou frame, Ichigo saw Urahara waving cheerfully down at them. “It’s ready!”

“Great,” Ichigo said, his voice conveying no such sentiment. Before Yoruichi could yell back to Urahara, he caught her wrist. “Grimmjow has mentioned crystal reishi before. Did you try to feel him out to see what he knew about this strange deposit when you suggested he overthrow Harribel?”

The slim wrist beneath his hand didn’t tense or jerk, but Ichigo felt the pulse inside it jump a little. Even without her knowing look, Ichigo could have answered his own question. Frustration erupted between the arch of his ribcage, hot and angry.

“One day,” Ichigo said quietly, “you’re going to need people like me. People like him. And you won’t have time to make these plans.” He released her wrist, but not her gaze. “If you don’t know by now who you can trust with your goddamn plots then maybe you should stop asking for favours.” Ignoring the veneer of calculation breaking in her expression, Ichigo snapped his eyes up and glared at Urahara. “Open it.”

Urahara planted his cane against the wooden frame and began the recitation.

_“ My right hand is the stone that bridges worlds… ”_

Slowly, the wide mouth of the garganta opened in a yawn between the frame, gaping black and dark in stepped segments. Beyond it was a throat to connect the worlds of human and hollow, and Ichigo leapt toward it without fear or hesitation. Anything to get away from the plots and machinations that surrounded Soul Society’s wants and needs. Even if it was just to protect them from themselves.

Leaping cleanly into the embrace of the wicked night beyond the mouth, Ichigo thought maybe Grimmjow had been onto something all along.

 

* * *

 

This time when Ichigo fell from the Hueco Mundo sky, he fell directly in front of the ivory citadel of Las Noches. No forest of menos. No running for days on end through sand and starlight. Instead Ichigo felt only the brief whistle of a chilly, stagnant wind billow his sleeves and hakama as he plummeted down to the raised walls of Harribel’s kingdom. He was cynical enough to think that Urahara could have done it that way the first time, and simply hadn’t for the drama and fun of it.

The sand hissed and shifted beneath his feet, pearl-white and cold. Tilting his head back to the sky, it looked the same as it had the first time: bleak and dark, dotted with sparse stars and a reversed moon that echoed the phase of the human world’s. Everything about Hueco Mundo felt like the reflection of the sky in a lake’s surface; everything was colder, darker, mirrored and empty.

Well, Ichigo thought wryly as a surge of reiatsu blinked from one end of Las Noches toward him, maybe not empty.

“Ichigoooo!!” called a high, feminine voice from over the wall, and then a warm, green, horned amazon of a woman slammed into him, driving them both backward into the sand for about eight feet. “I missed you so much! I’m supposed to escort you like a proper second-in-command, but who cares? I’m so glad to see you!” Wet kisses were pressed to his hair and temple as Nel made it clearly known in drooly terms just how much she’d missed him. It was only as she angled toward the edge of his mouth that Ichigo shoved her back by the shoulders, staring up into her smiling face and sparkling hazel eyes. She really was that happy to see him. Nel probably didn’t even realise she had his hips in a punishing thigh-lock. As always, Ichigo felt a small sibling stab of protectiveness, and he hoped to hell she didn’t greet anyone else like that.

“It’s really good to see you too, Nel,” he said on a half-smile, ridiculously pleased to see that kind of unabashed enjoyment at the sight of him. No plots, or lies, or half-truths. Not with Nel. He didn’t even protest as she ploughed her hands beneath the sand under his back and hauled him up in a bear hug, shoving his face into an unbound mane of riotous teal hair. She smelled like faint soap and cold night air, even if she felt like a warm coal against his skin. Why had he never noticed before just how alive they all felt?

“It’s been so long! When Harribel said she wanted to meet you I could have wet myself, honestly, but I played it pretty cool.” Nel grabbed his cheeks between her palms and pressed, her muddy eyes enormous as they stared directly into his. “You’d have been kinda proud.”

“You’re breaking my face.”

“Oh!” Releasing his skull from between her vice-like hands, Nel sat back on his knees and smiled. “Sorry. I’m still strangling people by accident and breaking jaws. You’d think I’d have my strength controlled after this long.” Her smile was wide and her cheeks were pink with embarrassment. “Come on, I’ll take you the shortest way to the throne room. You’re pretty quick these days, right?” Grabbing his forearm in a hand with the pressure of a striking cobra, Nel yanked him up and over the wall like a flappy black pillowcase of surprise, her strong thighs launching them both high into the air.

It actually took Ichigo two tries to get his footholds under him and follow her like an actual running person, and not a limp kite she’d decided to drag behind her. Adult Nel was just as formidable as child Nel, just in different ways. She still had a habit of sweeping him up in the chaos of her life, so effervescent and loud and pleased to see him he—well, he’d never been able to say no, even if he wanted to. Back under that black sky, there was no part of him that wanted to stop her.

They ran and ran for miles across the sky, and Las Noches swallowed their steps in its vast territory. The place was absolutely enormous.

“Sorry it looks so bad,” Nel said softly at one point as they travelled, her eyes looking only forward. “From up here it’s just eggshells all crushed up, until you get further in. It used to be nicer.”

Ichigo’s mouth picked up slightly. “I remember, Nel.” The hand around his forearm squeezed quickly in response. “Didn’t it used to be daytime this far in?”

“Aizen’s magic. I mean, his kidou.” Her profile was clean lines, but her eyes were hard. “We got rid of that once everyone left. You don’t make a place like Las Noches— _Las Noches!_ —into some sunshine replica of Seireitei. It was an insult, Ichigo. Stupid egos and penises. Harribel has no time for either.”

“Pe—” Don’t ask, Ichigo told himself desperately. “Penises?”

“Yes, Ichigo, penises. You’ve probably got one. Big, veiny, smells kinda weird—”

“Please stop talking.”

“We could talk about vaginas if you want.”

“No! Just go back to the part where Aizen put up the sunlight.”

“Oh.” Nel squinted ahead through the white rubble of destroyed towers, crumbled debris sitting on sand that looked as soft as powdered sugar. “Well, you know he came here years and years before he started gathering actual troops, just establishing himself as the new power. Kicked Baraggan out of bed and everything. He put a ceiling over Las Noches, then put that artificial daytime over that. I wasn’t really part of the inner circle then, but I was here. I remember my eyes tearing for days at the brightness, and all anyone could tell me was that shinigami eschewed the dark.” She turned slightly to look at Ichigo, her lips turning up in a faint smile. “But then he gave us all power in exchange for loyalty, and we all adjusted. He promised us we’d never regress, and he’d end the shinigami threat that thirsted for our blood. What do you call that? Propagation?”

“That’s plants. You mean propaganda.”

“Propaganda,” Nel repeated softly. Her hand was starting to sweat against his arm. “Yeah, I figured it all out once I met you. Ten minutes in your care and Aizen became the biggest liar there ever was.”

“It did help that you were two feet tall and bawling your eyes out,” Ichigo said on half a mumble. She made him sound like the second coming.

“You saw the broken mask on my head and didn’t try to split it on sight.” She said it so simply. “That might be just manners to you, but here it’s almost unheard of. The big fish eat the little fish, or something. We don’t have actual fish here. I’ve been reading a lot of Urahara’s books. There’s a lot of metaphors and words I don’t really get. What does turgid mean?”

“Uh…I think it means swollen.”

“And what’s a member?”

Ichigo felt true pain in his soul. “Nel, what did Urahara give you to read?”

“Yoruichi gave me those books. They’re by Mills and somebody. Urahara gave me ones to do with blood-drinking romantic men and women who were little.”

“We’re going through your book collection once I’ve met with Harribel,” Ichigo said resolutely. Preferably before she decided to emulate something out of one of them. The hand on his arm slipped suddenly as they leapt, losing traction from the warm friction of her sweaty hand. Ichigo lunged and caught her fingers in his reflexively, tangling them together.

The smile Nel gave him over her shoulder was blinding. Her hair whipped like a thick, curling flag beneath the bone-white of her mask.

“It’s really good to have you back, Ichigo.”

Ichigo couldn’t help the rush of affection that sang in his veins. “It’s good to be here. I hope I can be of some use.”

“Who cares if you’re not?” Nel said airily. Ichigo blinked. “Who cares about Soul Society and stupid walls? Who cares if it all crashes down? You’re here, the moon is bright, we’re alive and it’s good to see you.”

It was such a simple thing to say. Such a simple way of looking at things, and the entire opposite of the crap Yoruichi had spouted at him before he left. It was the kind of thing Grimmjow would say, if he knew how to express positive emotion like a normal person. Black and white. Sky and sand. It was probably a generalisation, but Nel and Grimmjow had the same boiled-down survivalist enjoyment of life that Ichigo kind of envied. Everywhere he turned he was being embroiled in life-changing events and stupid plots and people just—jerking him around. Every time he picked up his sword, someone else was tugging on the end of it, leading him places he didn’t always want to go.

But Hueco Mundo was simple, and harsh, and didn’t have time for politics or bullshit. It was as severe and stripped back as Nel’s free affection, or Grimmjow’s biting honesty. Only Aizen had brought deception and illusion to the place, and he was long gone. The crumbling stone was testimony to that. Even the Sternritter were nothing but a few old bones scattered in the bleached sand.

Maybe, this time, where he’d been led was exactly where Ichigo needed to be. Part of him still wished that Grimmjow was the one showing him everything, that his gripping hand was hard on Ichigo’s shoulder and it was Grimmjow’s sharp look of concentration he could see out the corner of his eye, but it was also easy to breathe clean air and stare ahead into the moonlit darkness with Nel’s smile lighting up the night, feeling her warm fingers clenched around his.

 _It suits us here,_ a voice whispered behind Ichigo’s ear. A white-static voice, as familiar as his conscience. He didn’t try to suppress it. _Better if he was here to play with._

“You said it.”

“What?” Nel laughed, not bothering to turn. Ichigo just yanked on her hand, pulling her back and letting go as he launched on ahead, flickering in and out of sight. He could see where she was leading him now: the rise of the last intact tower jutted huge and imposing behind the lower buildings. Behind the old crushed dome it stood proudly, overseeing nothing but wreckage and ruin.

Home, Grimmjow had called it. A place that used to be better, before the shinigami and the quincy used it for their own ends. To help protect it, all Ichigo had to do was find a cache of reishi that had a spiritual density strong enough to crack even Yoruichi’s bravado. Piece of cake, he thought in resignation, but something about the idea didn’t really feel like a chore. In the back of his mind, Ichigo hoped Grimmjow wouldn’t be too angry that he was going on ahead without him.

“Wait!” Nel yelled indignantly, planting her feet against the air and giving chase. “Stupid Ichigo! I’m the escort!”

“So escort me—when you catch up!” The reply he got was a colourful wash of expletives and a couple of words Nel probably hadn’t learned the meaning of yet. Grinning fiercely, Ichigo felt her gain in a rush and pushed himself to keep ahead. Far beneath them, hollows of varying size and evolution squinted up at him, then waved a dismissive hand or tentacle once they saw Nel. It dawned on him quickly that she was probably the protector of Las Noches, where Harribel ruled supreme. If Nel was on the case, they thought they were all safe from one shinigami hauling ass over the busted ruins. Good for her, he thought proudly.

The distraction was all Nel needed to kick Ichigo’s knees out and flip him backwards, all footholds lost. A boot was shoved on his chest with extreme prejudice.

“Eat _pussy,_ Ichigo!” she yelled aggressively through cupped hands, as he rocketed headfirst into the rubble. “Home team advantage!”

On second thought, Ichigo pondered before he hit the stone, maybe they could all just fucking get invaded and die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i fucking love nel
> 
> notes for the chapter: las noches literally translates to 'the nights' so let's all give aizen a big round of applause for being a giant infected dickhole
> 
> the comments on this continue to blow my brains out against the wall. i love you weird assholes more than grimmjow loves pancakes ♥


	12. Chapter 12

Long after the black mouth of the portal had closed, Yoruichi stood silent before the garganta’s frame. The line of her mouth held no trace of a smile. Ichigo had done as they’d asked, as she’d known he eventually would, but the weight of his words still shifted across her shoulders, threatening to bow her back. He was slowly rescinding his trust in them, that much was plain. Was it Grimmjow’s influence? Or was it simply their due at this point? Maybe it was both.

“I don’t like this, Kisuke.” She didn’t turn when familiar footsteps shifted behind her. “Whatever I felt down there is going to be waiting for Ichigo, and that’s only if Harribel makes the deal. She may very well decide he doesn’t live up to his reputation.”

“Are you afraid for him?”

Yoruichi snorted. “He always lands on his feet. But I don’t like sending him off there alone.” Shrugging off the hand that settled on her shoulder, she turned and frowned at her old friend. “This reishi isn’t our last hope, you know. The outer districts, they’ll—”

“Seireitei had no intentions even when it did have stockpiles,” Urahara said calmly. “We’ve spent too long watching Soul Society act in the interests of its inner circle. The world’s getting bigger, Yoruichi-san, and this time we are uniquely positioned to act. We have an obligation of power, after all.” Observing the shift of artificial air twirling dust in the wake of the garganta’s closure, Urahara smiled faintly. “Why do you make me repeat myself?”

“To see if you believe half of the shit you say sometimes,” Yoruichi said crisply. “And to make sure you don’t change your story partway through. We just sent Kurosaki Ichigo into Hueco Mundo again for this. Do you think there won’t be repercussions outside this plan of yours?” Crossing her arms over her chest, she drove the point of her elbow into Urahara’s side. “He might trust us to an extent, but we’re beginning to lose him. We should have just been honest with both of them. Grimmjow’s no fool either.”

Yoruichi grunted slightly as Urahara clasped her in a tight, rocking hug from behind. A scruffy cheek pushed against her own, as rough as a cat’s tongue. She bristled.

“Ah, Yoruichi-san, you know how I love it when you show faith in our companions!” He artfully evaded two elbow jabs with his usual good cheer. “However, Grimmjow desperately needs plausible deniability with Soul Society in case this all goes wrong, and Kurosaki-san is hardly in a stronger position. Let me wear the blame if this ends up in a huge mess. It very well may.”

“Because the strange reishi has reiatsu enough to split my skull? Something reishi shouldn’t even have?”

“Well, I was going to say because Kurosaki-san is such a troublemaker, and Grimmjow might very well attempt to break Kuchiki-san’s neck…but yes, that’s a valid concern too.”

Troubled by it all in ways she couldn’t fully explain, Yoruichi scowled out at the wide stretch of the training bunker, like Ichigo could even be on its horizon somewhere. By her shoulder, Kisuke lost a little of his exuberant veneer.

“I won’t let harm come to either of them,” he said finally, like it even needed saying. “And I honestly doubt they’ll let harm come to one another.”

“We split them up.”

“And they’ll find each other again. They always do.”

“Your romantic outlook will probably be the death of us all, you know.”

“But what a death that will be!” Urahara laughed, lifting Yoruichi bodily by her waist and staggering toward the ladder that would take them back to the shop. “Now come on. I hid a second bottle of sake just in case Grimmjow wasn’t convinced by Kurosaki-san, and I intend for us to drink it all.”

“Can I at least put some pants on first?”

“You may petition for pants after the first drink.”

Wanting to huff and grumble at him, honestly she did, Yoruichi let herself be hauled away like chattel with ill grace. Truthfully, she was tired, and Kisuke always knew when she needed a distraction from the worldly weights of their intricate fucking plans. The thing was, that instinct went both ways, and she could see the tightness in the corners of his mouth that said his laughter, yet again, was nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Honestly, Yoruichi wasn’t sure how much longer they could keep doing what they did, but telling Urahara Kisuke to stop meddling in the world’s events was a lot like telling fish not to swim.

She just hoped Ichigo was faring well, whatever he was doing out there.

* * *

 

Whatever Kurosaki was doing back home, it had to be better than the shitshow Grimmjow was putting up with.

The trip in had been bad enough already, with his bitchy little shinigami escort hissing and prodding him for saying shit about the obvious construction attempts in the area. First time he’d come through the gates to Seireitei—the court of pure souls, as the shinigami had called it, like they could crawl any further up their own asses—and something about seeing the place look like crumbled shit in the moonlight had really brightened his mood. Why not comment on it?

Because it’s impolite to highlight the devastation everyone was working so hard to recover from, Kuchiki had said sternly, like the walls around shinigami town were all that mattered in Soul Society. Grimmjow would bet the last fragment of his mask that she was raised a rich girl, whatever Kurosaki said about her starving in outlying towns. Amazing what you forgot after a few years with a full belly and a soft bed.

It was how Aizen had gotten most of the espada on his side, after all.

Truth was the place might look like shit but Las Noches looked a hell of a lot worse, so in the interests of having somewhere to carve out for himself someday Grimmjow was going to meet with the head of the shinigami and play nice. But not before the midget queen herself walked him past every fuckin’ asshole with a sword the place could spit at him. They were on the overhead balconies, they were clustering in the alleyways between buildings, everywhere. A kicked nest of black ants, s’all they were. He made sure his glare said as much.

“Be polite,” Kuchiki said over her shoulder, two steps ahead as they practically marched down the main road toward a towering structure in the centre of the curving walls and cracked buildings. “We’re not going to hurry in. Let them see you. If everything goes well, you’ll be seeing them a little more frequently so maybe try not to sneer so much. Greet them, even.”

“Like I greeted you first time we met, shinigami?” Grimmjow gave her his sharpest grin. He glanced over at some boring-looking losers with absolutely no notable identifiers to speak of. Did they even know they were cannon fodder? “Hey, fuck-knuckles! It’s half price on piercings today if you keep looking at my hair like that.”

“Grimmjow!” And there was the predictable reaction. “Just close your damn jaw if you can’t say anything decent.”

“Which one?” he replied, working his mouth so the mask clacked like a skull. Dark blue eyes rolled hard enough to strain something.

“I can see why Ichigo likes you. You’re both argumentative morons.”

Grimmjow couldn’t think of a damn thing to say that. Worse, she seemed to notice it. Well, fuck it, he didn’t have to talk to her or the gawking morons muttering to each other like he couldn’t hear. Hollow, hollow, hollow. His ears kept picking it up. Anything with more than two brain cells could tell he was more than just some fuckin’ hollow, but leave it to a shinigami to separate each other into categories based on what kind of thing they liked sticking their swords in, while Hueco Mundo was just the garbage dump of souls they couldn’t save in time. As if he’d ever have taken a konsou from anything that looked like those bottom-feeders with their pin-dick zanpakutou, anyway.

As he stalked down the centre of the wide white road leading to the heart of the shinigami capital, Grimmjow thought that the only shinigami he wanted to give him a decent send-off was currently back in the living world, probably weeping into his shihakushou. His mouth twitched at the thought. Nah. Kurosaki was made of tougher stuff, or he’d have properly fucked Grimmjow off by then on account of all the shit he gave him over Soul Society.

Ahead of him, tic-tac-tits was darting him annoyed looks.

“Well, now you’re too quiet.”

“Your head looks like a black turnip from behind. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“No,” was the tight reply. A beat, and then, “Usually they said it was an onion. How do you even know what a turnip looks like? Have you been market shopping for Urahara?”

Grimmjow’s gut pinched slightly in alarm, but he brushed it off. “Sure. I buy the cat treats and the lube. They go through a lot of it, you know.”

“I bet,” she replied with a shake of her dark head. She waved smartly at a small group of thuggish shinigami trying to affect casual poses with their swords across their shoulders, then gave him another patented wry look. “Urahara puts on that happy face, but deep down you can just tell he’s into the depraved stuff. Why does he need that many spare gigai of himself? How does he build them? Body casts?” Her eyes narrowed a little. “Did he lovingly smear you in plaster himself?”

“Fuck no.”

They trudged on down the road a while longer in silence after that. Grimmjow watched the back of her head for a moment. She was the shinigami friend that Kurosaki missed the most, probably. He could still remember his hand punching through the squelching heat of her stomach. Now they were taking a leisurely walk together, and her belly was instead full of sake they’d shared. Grimmjow thought about the alliances they were supposed to make. He wasn’t stupid enough to think the shinigami wouldn’t press the first advantage they had, try to undercut Las Noches because of how fucked up the place was, but he had trouble thinking any friend to Kurosaki would be such a shady fuck.

“Oy, shinigami—”

“Kuchiki Rukia,” she cut in automatically, without turning back. “My name. Try not to let it slide out your other ear this time. I know there’s a lot of room inside that head.”

Grimmjow grit his teeth hard. Haughty bitch. Checking the hilt of Pantera against his palm, feeing the itch of irritation swarm under his skin, he told himself for the tenth time that he was going to take the entire excursion out on Kurosaki the next time he saw him.

“Well, what is it? What were you going to say?” The question came after another few moments, mostly spent on his part weighing the pros and cons of just calling the entire thing a day and going back to Urahara’s with her cero-charred corpse hanging over his shoulder. He ignored her right up until she stopped walking and turned to frown up into his face. “Look, we don’t like each other, but I think you can agree we both trust Ichigo enough that if he thinks we won’t kill each other, we’ll probably manage this. Can you stop being so damn prickly? I let you keep the sword, I’ve been mostly polite—”

“Let me keep the sword,” Grimmjow sneered. “Do you even know what the fuck it is?”

“It’s a passable imitation of a zanpakutou,” she replied stubbornly. “Lacking in the essence of a zanpakutou spirit—”

“It’s me, you dumb shit. I don’t have a fuckin’ bankai, I am one.” Pulling the sheath up from his belt, he tilted the hilt until its woven grip sat almost under her nose. “The sword doesn’t contain an imaginary fucking friend. It’s all my hollow powers. You don’t let me keep shit, Kuchiki Rukia.”

Kuchiki’s expression was pinched in thought. Figuring he’d made his point well enough, he straightened up.

She grabbed Pantera’s hilt and sang it straight from its sheath in one smooth glide. Ignoring his outrage, she weighed the blade like a swordsmith across her open palms, the flat of the blade shining against her skin. Grimmjow saw red. In his palm a cero began to build, crimson and hot with reiryoku. Fuck the fucking treaty, the alliance, the whole stupid pipe dream of it they’d smoked up in the fucking Urahara shop—

“It’s quite a good blade,” she admitted, sliding him a look. “The binding is well-maintained, not dirty or sweat-stained. No ragged edge or chipping on the blade. The shine of the steel is mirrorlike and the matte edge is smooth. No evidence of a fuller. It has an excellent balance.” The eyes she lifted to him were approving as she presented it for him to reclaim. “This is a great sword, Grimmjow.” As he let the cero gutter out and fade, the corner of her mouth quirked a little. “It can’t possibly be a reflection of its wielder.”

Sheathing Pantera with clean, albeit jerky movements, Grimmjow started to wonder if all of Kurosaki’s friends were as suicidally reckless as he was. But she was right; it was a damn good sword, and for that he wasn’t going to gut her with it.

“You all can back the fuck off now,” Grimmjow said, not bothering to turn around. Kuchiki blinked around him at the bodies belonging to the eight reiatsu signatures behind him, their swords probably drawn since the moment he raised his cero. “Or don’t. Doesn’t mean shit to me.”

“Oh for—get back to your posts!” Kuchiki snapped, waving the shinigami group off. “Don’t insult me by charging in like a bunch of fools. What are you, non-seated members? Eleventh or not, he’d kill you all in an instant.”

“But Captain Zaraki would love a new mounted trophy for the barracks,” one of them said, probably elbowing his companions while he sniggered. There was no responding laughter, which said two things. One, that he was the dumbest of the group, and two, that his friends had noticed the much, much larger reiatsu signature swelling behind them. Grimmjow turned around with casual ease, not missing the sudden wary flash in the shortass’s eyes.

“Interesting gathering,” said a broad, tall shinigami with unkempt dark hair and a smile savage enough to peel paint. His haori was white and shredded at the ends. The unsheathed sword braced over his shoulder looked like pitted shit. His reiatsu felt like forged iron compared to Aizen’s oppressive wall. “I heard something about a guest, but nothing about an armed arrancar.”

Grimmjow’s mouth flattened. This one knew the difference. Before he could reply, one of the shinigami stepped forward, chest out and eyes fixed.

“Captain, the hollow displayed aggression toward the lieutenant in the form of a cero. Respectfully we would like to disarm it and apprehend it until it can be tried for the offence against the Gotei 13.”

Grimmjow laughed. He couldn’t help it. Neither could the captain with the shitty sword. As he turned his face out of shadowed profile, Grimmjow could see a thick black eyepatch covering his right eye.

“You’re new here from sixth, so as a favour to your previous captain you get to be stupid exactly once.” Stooping slightly, the captain put his face right into the sweating shinigami’s. “But you don’t ever insult the eleventh by suggesting we take prisoners.” His smile dropped right off his face. “Especially not when a substantive lieutenant is telling you to get fucked.”

Kuchiki stepped up alongside Grimmjow as the horrified shinigami stammered his apologies.

“Zaraki Kenpachi,” she told him offhandedly. “Captain of the eleventh division and widely known as an utter madman. He commands what’s unofficially known as the wildest and most reckless collection of warriors in the Gotei 13.”

As the shinigami group scattered like rats, Grimmjow watched the big one. He had a killer’s glare, but the scars said someone had gotten a few hits on him.

“So he can fight,” he said, barely a question. Kuchiki cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh, he can fight.” Turning towards the shinigami in question, Kuchiki squared her shoulders respectfully and nodded. “Captain Zaraki, this is Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, former espada number six. We’re on our way to meet with the Captain-Commander now.”

“Espada, huh?” Zaraki smiled with teeth like jagged glass. “You got one of those brands somewhere like the rest of ‘em?”

“Why don’t you come find it?” Grimmjow replied, thumbing Pantera a few inches out of its scabbard. That jagged smile widened even further. Something about the asshole made his hackles rise.

“Don’t think this place would hold up if I did. Strict instructions not to undo all the hard work around here, you know.” The tone of his voice said volumes on that topic. Arcing his sword down in a whipping motion like he was shaking invisible blood from the blade, Zaraki said suddenly, “You see Ichigo again, you tell him I haven’t forgotten our business isn’t finished.” He stalked away back into the shadows before Grimmjow could verbalise how much he didn’t give a shit about passing messages.

Once he was gone, Kuchiki sagged a little.

“He’s been so weird since Yachiru vanished into his zanpakutou.” When he looked at her, she said heavily, “Don’t ask. Even we’re not sure, and nobody is game enough to ask.”

“I don’t actually give a fuck. Let’s get this over with.”

Picking up the pace after that, Grimmjow hoped to hell that was the first and last introduction he had with the assorted captains of the Gotei 13. Not that he didn’t enjoy trading threats with assholes, but if he wasn’t able to eviscerate anyone freely there just wasn’t a lot of fun in it. What the hell kind of business did Kurosaki have with that big bastard anyway? Ichigo, he’d called him. Like they were friends or something. Like that torn-up piece of living leather was something Kurosaki would call a friend.

Gut churning, Grimmjow scowled down at his tiny escort.

“Does he just make friends everywhere?” He didn’t have to explain who. Kuchiki rolled her eyes.

“Absolutely everywhere.”

“What the fuck?”

“I know, I know. Even my brother likes him.” Her face scrunched up. “I’m not even sure my brother likes  _me_. Ichigo just has that kind of effect on people. He thaws hearts, I guess, and he’s the kind of person people just like to be around.” At his tremendous scowl, Kuchiki smirked a little. “What, did you think it was just you? I hate to break it to you, but Ichigo is almost everybody’s favourite up here. More or less, anyway. I think Captain Zaraki generally just wants to fight him until they both bleed out and die together.”

Grimmjow stiffened. “Well he can fuckin’ get in line. Kurosaki is mine.”

“Actually, he did get to Ichigo first,” Kuchiki said, the glint in her eye pure shitty wickedness. She leapt onto a rooftop and started flash-stepping across them, apparently done with the presentation. About time. “You can all kill each other later though, after this whole thing is settled. Right now we’re heading that way.” She pointed toward the centre of the walled city. High above that, a cliff-side with a massive white tower built against it jutted up into the night sky.

“Figures this place would have an actual ivory tower.”

“That’s the Senzaikyuu,” Kuchiki replied cheerfully, pointing it out like a tour guide. “The tower of penitence. I was held there once prior to my execution. See that broken frame? That’s the Soukyoku. It has enough power to absolutely obliterate the soul of a shinigami. No reincarnation once you’ve been hit with that.” She spoke the way someone would comment on the weather, not her own public execution.

“It’s broken.”

“Yeah, Ichigo did a number on it.”

_Try not to destroy the place. They get kinda mad if you break stuff._

_Voice of experience, huh?_

_Definitely._

Grimmjow was starting to feel like he’d missed out on an epic story in the life of Kurosaki Ichigo. Maybe he wasn’t Soul Society’s bitch after all. Maybe he’d actually fought them so hard they couldn’t help but recognise him. Clawed his way in and smashed the place to pieces, and they still liked him.

Sounded kind of familiar, really.

Grimmjow slowed his pace down to a walk.

“Start at the beginning.”

Kuchiki completely failed to hide her smile.

“I think you’re gonna like this one.”

* * *

 

From the ground level, Las Noches looked even worse than Ichigo remembered. White on white, broken stone littered the dunes everywhere. The place looked like a bomb had been dropped on it. Where there had once been massive strong pillars there was now shattered stone, broken cylinders still jutting from the ground like a mouth full of cracked teeth. Hollows of varying stages of evolution milled about, either not worried about having to eat each other or just having given up on it altogether. They looked at Ichigo and Nel with mild interest that was far outweighed by their apathy. They looked kind of beaten down, really.

But it wasn’t all bad. One tower still stood proud, undamaged by Ichigo and his friends. The sternritter hadn’t taken it down either. It was there that Nel led him, through the arched doorway and into a massive chamber that echoed with emptiness.

“Well, this is creepy,” Ichigo said, squinting into the shadows that surrounded them. “Can you even see where you’re going?”

“Well, I have been here a few times,” Nel said dryly. “We’d turn the lights on for our guest but someone smashed the power grid a couple of years ago. There’s generators down in the lower levels somewhere but none of the hollows can remember enough about their old lives to figure out how to fix the lines.”

“Okay, okay,” Ichigo replied uncomfortably. He didn’t need to ask exactly who had initially smashed the place. “Well, maybe Urahara can help with all of that once we get this alliance together.”

“It’s not all bad. There’s still a lot of gadgets in the lower levels that we haven’t explored, and Aizen left behind a massive cache of preserved food that none of us hollows actually need.” Her hazel eyes lit up in the half-shadow of the chamber. “And beds! But no blankets. You can share mine though, in case you get cold at night. I stay pretty warm, you know.”

Ichigo had a split-second vision of himself sleeping in a bed with Nel tangled around him, drooling into her own hair and muttering in her sleep. His next thought was to wonder where Grimmjow’s room was. Did he even have one anymore? Or would it just be some empty corner of the last tower of Las Noches, some place where he could put his sword down. He was still thinking about it when Nel’s tugging hand on his wrist took them down a wide, short corridor and around a corner into what could only be a throne room.

Literally. It was a massive room with a huge white throne in the centre of it, elevated onto a dais that overlooked the chamber. It was also empty.

“Harribel-samaaaa,” Nel called, her long and ringing hail echoing into a cacophony of sound. “Shinigami substitute Kurosaki Ichigo would like to make his greetings to you.” With a strong palm she shoved Ichigo onto his knees before the throne.

“Ow,” he muttered. “There’s nobody here, Nel!”

The whip-flash of reiatsu that crossed his senses was almost too fast to notice, but the white-booted legs suddenly standing in front of Ichigo’s bowed head said yeah, someone really had moved that quickly.

“I told you not to call me that, Nelliel,” said a low, pleasant-sounding female voice. Ichigo lifted his head, letting his eyes slowly take in Tier Harribel, queen of Hueco Mundo.

His first impression was that of strength, and it had nothing to do with the blunt, wide white sword that hung shield-like and enveloped her forearm. It was in her stance and the way her green eyes assessed him right back, clear and calm. Foolishly he’d expected someone almost Yammy’s size, but Harribel was slim and lean, with brown skin and yellow hair that fell around her face and neck in haphazard strands, matching the thickness of her eyelashes. He was pretty sure he could see jagged blue estigma on her cheeks. Given her lack of clothing and the bone plates that fit against her skin, Ichigo figured she was in her resurrección form all the time. Well, why not? An arrancar queen in her own territory didn’t have any reason to keep her powers sealed. A sudden thought occurred to him. Should he have arrived in bankai? Was that more polite? What if he looked like he was underestimating her by not using it? Oh, shit, what if he’d ruined everything before he’d even begun? That’d be just his luck.

“Stand up, Kurosaki Ichigo.” Her free hand tipped his chin up, tugging the rest of his body up with the gesture. It brought into perspective just how close she was standing. Their noses were only five inches from touching. “Twice now you’ve defeated Hueco Mundo’s enemies. I won’t have you kneel before me.”

“Twice? Yhwach and his guys probably only count as one.”

“I also refer to Aizen Sousuke.”

“Urahara did most of that,” Ichigo replied awkwardly. Hadn’t she been on Aizen’s side? Or was she like Grimmjow too?

“Urahara Kisuke believes otherwise.” Harribel blinked slowly. “As do I.” Turning to Nel, she tilted her chin at a doorway to her left. “Perhaps something for our shinigami ambassador to drink? Have Sung-Sun put something together.”

“She is least likely to spit in it,” Nel agreed, already jogging for the doorway. “Be back soon, Ichigo!”

Her abrupt departure left Ichigo feeling like he wanted to go running after her. Should he be left alone with Harribel? What if he said something? The only cultural education he’d gotten on hollows was just Grimmjow telling him how stupid he was for making assumptions. Which probably meant he shouldn’t lead with anything like ‘so, ever eat any human kids?’ and the like.

“You guys have water here in the desert?” he asked curiously. “Nel said the power had been mostly cut.”

“Tiburon generates water from the atmosphere, and can convert it from the surrounding reishi. We have a great amount of it stored in tanks.” She brought the sword around to plant between them. With a bare flicker of power, Ichigo could see its surface immediately slick with water. Fascinated, he reached out and dragged his fingertips across it.

“It’s hot,” he marvelled, darting her an appreciative look. “Your zanpakutou can make water in a desert. In my world you’d be worshipped like a god, depending on where you went. That is a seriously amazing power.”

“I appreciate your flattery, but it’s unnecessary for our negotiations.” The water on the blade stopped flowing. “We each have something the other wants.”

“I’m not sucking up, I mean it,” he insisted. “I didn’t think I’d be able to have a bath the entire time I was here.”

Harribel’s gaze narrowed slightly. “Our world may be harsh and harshly damaged, but we still retain some of the refined comforts of before. Or perhaps you think us little better than savages, rolling in the sand.”

Yikes. Ichigo felt himself flounder for something to say. Why had they sent him? He had no fucking idea how to be respectful to people!

“Sorry,” he said finally, his expression feeling so pinched it was a wonder it didn’t turn inside out. “My knowledge of Hueco Mundo lately comes from Grimmjow, and he’s not exactly forthcoming.”

Harribel’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Then you have no idea what we require or can offer in exchange for this treaty? Our numbers, our strength, our resources? What did you come here expecting?”

“People who need help,” Ichigo said, his stomach sinking at the dawning incredulity in Harribel’s eyes. He was fucking this up so bad, and now on top of all that he looked stupid. “I figured I could learn the rest as I went.”

“People,” Harribel repeated slowly, like she was tasting a new and foreign word. “I suppose I should have known better than to doubt Nelliel’s judgement.” Her eyes cleared. “Very well, Kurosaki Ichigo. We’ll simply have to forgive each other’s ignorance as we consider the finer details of this treaty.”

Ichigo blinked. “I haven’t even told you what Urahara wants yet.”

“I’m sure we can come to mutually beneficial terms.” Her palm settled on his shoulder, feeling cool through his uniform. “I had a feeling you would be the correct choice. There’s very little guile in your eyes.” The way she said it made Ichigo frown.

“Are you calling me stupid?”

There was a rattle and a short yell from the doorway Nel had disappeared into. Something clattered to the floor.

“Oh, shitbiscuits!”

“Nelliel, you dumb bitch! Sung-Sun, get the mop. Not that one, that’s the fucking push broo—oh forget it, I’ll do it. Mila Rose, go find Gin’s old coffee stash. The tea’s a bust.”

“Good. It tasted like Tousen’s dick anyway.” The room erupted in howls of denial and laughter.

Ichigo stared down the doorway in horror. Harribel sighed a little and touched her temple, but otherwise didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look surprised, which meant that kind of talk was probably normal. Disappointing, but normal.

Something told Ichigo he was in for an interesting couple of days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back to the jukebox :)


	13. Chapter 13

The Captain-Commander’s personal rooms were luridly lavish compared to the sparse and gaping rooms Kuchiki had led Grimmjow through on the way. Instead of square miles of ancient polished wooden floors and an occasional paper screen, the internal rooms were furnished in dark wood furniture and soft cushions, the floors covered in overlapping rugs and with lit lanterns hanging in every corner. Grimmjow hadn’t seen anything like it before. Hell, even Kuchiki wrinkled her nose slightly, though that could have been due to the weird fucking incense hanging in the air.

Grimmjow didn’t know what he’d expected of king shinigami’s office, but the dim opulence sure as shit wasn’t it.

Seated by the low central table in a casual sprawl, Captain-Commander Kyouraku Shunsui waved lazily for him to approach.

“Come sit, come sit. Forgive the informality of doing this in my personal chamber, but if we do it out in the formal introduction hall I have to get all the captains out of bed.” He nodded with familiarity to Kuchiki, who was already kneeling in deference. “You can leave us, Lieutenant.”

Kuchiki darted a look between them that was pure uncertainty.

“Sir, shall I at least secure his zanpakutou?”

Oh, so she was calling it a zanpakutou now. An hour ago it had been a passable imitation. Kyouraku just smiled.

“What for? I have mine.” He nodded to a lacquered sheath leaning within arm’s reach. “There’s no need for a fight, so there’s little for either of us to worry about, is there? See Nanao-chan while you’re on your way out, please. I think your requisition request for updated gigai was approved.”

Giving Grimmjow a narrow look full of misgivings, Kuchiki nodded and bowed her ass right out of the room. Words like ropes, he thought, his mouth tight. For the first time he wondered where the hell Aizen was in the pretty little shinigami palace. The Captain-Commander had a similar iron smile and it put him on edge. When he gestured again at the table Grimmjow sat, tilting his scabbard with a practised hand. Time to see what all the bullshit was about.

“Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez,” the man said smoothly, sounding it out. “It’s a strong name. Lot of sharp edges. Did Aizen name you, or did you come by it yourself?”

Right down into the bullshit, then.

“It’s mine.” Whatever was in his tone made placating palms rise in apology.

“Ah, I mean no offence. Our information on Aizen Sousuke’s involvement with the arrancar of Hueco Mundo is still sketchy at best. As you can imagine, trying to get any truth out of him is a little like trading the devil diamonds for dirt.” King shinigami smiled. “And I say that as someone who is fond of a riddle or two. Sake?”

“Yeah.”

Grimmjow watched him serve with careful attention. It wasn’t poison he was thinking about, or the invitation into personal quarters. It was that it didn’t feel completely structured or calculated, the way a false overture might. Not that Grimmjow was interested in letting his guard down, or buying into the shinigami’s easy friendship. The guy wasn’t Captain-Commander because he wanted peace on all three worlds. He was Captain-Commander because the shinigami wanted him to be, which meant he served their interests first and foremost.

What Grimmjow sat across the table from was a smooth politician. The casual clothing, the bright hair pins, the combed beard, the smile—all window dressing. His visible eye was hard as stone.

Tossing back the entire dish of sake before him, Grimmjow licked the points of his teeth. Kyouraku tipped his head curiously.

“Is it to your liking?”

“Better than the shit Urahara serves up.” He slid the dish back across the table with a low clatter. “Too bad you play the same games. Get to the point here. You don’t need to know if I’m trustworthy, and you don’t need to know if you like me. Las Noches and Seireitei each have their hands on something the other side wants. The fuck am I doing here? Meet and greet, my ass.”

“Why do you think you’re here?” Questions as answers. Grimmjow’s fuckin’ favourite. The second dish went the same way as the first.

“I think I’m here because you want to know if Kurosaki’s starting to sympathise with the hollow. I think that’s the only reason you’re even thinking of trading for reishi instead of taking.” Planting his elbows on the table, Grimmjow bared his teeth. “What’s your interest in him, is my damn question. Thought Soul Society picked him up and put him down as they pleased.”

“Our interest?” Kyouraku repeated, settling back slightly. A wavy lock of brown hair fell over his unblinking eye. “The same as it’s always been. Substitute or not, Kurosaki Ichigo is a shinigami. One of our finest, as a matter of fact. We tend to look after our own, though it may not always be apparent to the uninitiated.”

“To a hollow, you mean.”

Kyouraku nodded once. “Yes, that’s what I mean. Even to a hollow, who, according to our reports, has been willingly donning a modified gigai for the past few months in order to visit with Kurosaki.” He leaned forward, taking up his tokkuri to pour another drink for them both. “Kuchiki writes her reports well, and always in Kurosaki’s favour. We tend to give him the benefit of the doubt anyway, considering his history, but I confess—”

“Cut the bullshit, for fuck’s sake.” Under Grimmjow’s grip the wooden table creaked warningly. “Fucking shinigami. You want to know if I’m there to turn him traitor? Whisper bullshit and lies to undercut Seireitei like some kind of last resort for fucking Aizen? Go fuck yourself!” His palms were burning with the acrid reiryoku of a cero he wouldn’t summon. Like he’d give that fucker the satisfaction. “If Kurosaki ever betrays this crumbling shithole it’ll be on his own terms. I’ll be sitting back watching the goddamn bonfire, make no fuckin’ mistake, but if you think for a damn second anyone gets one over Kurosaki—even me—then you deserve to rot up here without him the next time your enemies break through.”

To say Grimmjow was pissed off didn’t even begin to cover it. Unsurprised, but pissed off. Kurosaki would bend over backwards until his spine shattered for—for these _assholes_ , who couldn’t go two months without suspecting him of being the next fucking traitor shinigami to bring them down. The shittiest part of it? Grimmjow was the reason, by virtue of the hole punched through his guts and the mask on his cheek. Hollow. Aizen’s, Harribel’s, or working for himself, it didn’t fuckin’ matter. He wasn’t a damn shinigami and even two years and a battle won side by side with them wasn’t enough to convince the ivory tower’s top brass he wasn’t still brewing war.

Using Kurosaki. What the flying fuck. Snarling, he threw himself back down on the cushions and grabbed the entire bottle of sake out of Kyouraku’s grasp.

“You can all get fucked,” Grimmjow told him, seething all over again. “You know why I’m up here? Kurosaki asked it of me as a fuckin’ favour. To help you assholes out because you’re all up here making enemies faster than you can build walls.” He slugged back another dish of sake, almost too fast to taste. Alcohol took forever to hit him outside his gigai, but fuck it, he wasn’t paying.

A slight rustle from across the table took his attention, but the asshole was just leaning back on an enormous pillow. The place looked like the inside of a fuckin fortune teller’s caravan with all the lanterns and cushions. Something had changed though; the calm smile had curved up into something properly amused.

“You have strong feelings on the subject of Kurosaki Ichigo’s services to us. I suppose after the freedom of Hueco Mundo, Soul Society looks like a lot of useless bureaucracy to you. A self-serving anthill of black-garbed soldiers, running about and proclaiming they know best.” A dark brow arched slightly above the tilt of his sake dish. “Aizen would have been quite a harsh introduction to our ways.”

Grimmjow felt like an iron band was tightening around his chest, pushing the air out of his lungs.

“Aizen taught us a few decent lessons,” he agreed, his mouth pulling into a sneer. “He taught us that shinigami will make alliances with the hollow right up until they get what they want. Make promises and offers of strength.” He stared across at Kyouraku, whose smile had faded. “Kind of what you’re doing now, except we haven’t made it to the part where you betray us.”

“You make it sound as though it’s an absolute given.” Planting his cheek on one fist, Kyouraku gave him a wry smile. “I’m not Aizen, you know. Neither am I my predecessor. Aizen despised him for his insistence on holding to the old ways. Duty was Yama-jii’s bread and butter. Duty and obedience. Ukitake and I were raised in that long shadow. Aizen’s belief that we held to the same code meant he never saw us coming when we sealed the Soukyoku, preventing him from taking his jewel from Kuchiki Rukia’s body. Forcing him out into the open, to remove it himself.” Captain-Commander Kyouraku shook his head. His single visible eye was sad. “Feels like lifetimes ago. It’s too soon for me to wear this mantle. Ukitake might have suited it better, but we leftovers do what we must.” When he took the jug to pour again, Grimmjow sullenly pushed his dish across the table towards him.

Leftovers. Reminded him of the words he’d said to Kurosaki that night on the street, the alcohol-burn of his mouth still sweet on Grimmjow’s tongue. Forgotten pieces of a war long finished, left to rot or wither or flourish—didn’t matter which, since nobody gave a shit. Maybe they were all just fucking leftovers in one way or another. Peace had a weird kind of wreckage about it when soldiers had nothing left to fight. Grimmjow wondered if king shinigami felt that eerie weight on his shoulders too.

Lotta dead between them all, hollow and shinigami alike. The quincy war had taken too much from either side, that much had to be acknowledged. But fuck if he knew how to trust an offer of help, even one mutually beneficial, just because Kurosaki wanted it.

Now Grimmjow sat across from the shinigami who commanded their entire army, knowing his own presence in Kurosaki’s world had turned their suspicions on him. They couldn’t even trust their own. They’d never trust the arrancar queen of Las Noches.

Maybe that was why he was there. Kurosaki’s arrancar, he thought to himself with a silent snort. Might be a better door than being scalded alive by Tiburon if they burst into Hueco Mundo uninvited. If anything said desperation, it was asking him.

Kuchiki’s plan was probably all the Gotei 13 had left to rely upon. The alternative was a war nobody could afford.

Taking his refilled sake dish, Grimmjow didn’t drink from it immediately. He watched the tilt and glimmer of lanternlight reflect off the liquid. When he finally did look up, Kyouraku was untying his eyepatch, tugging it through his hair to rest on the table. The dark hole where his eye used to be seemed to stare on its own. Without any comment, Kyouraku started scratching fiercely around the socket.

“Fuck’s sake,” Grimmjow said, disgusted. “Can’t you do that somewhere else?”

“Nobody ever tells you how itchy sweat can be under an eyepatch.” At Grimmjow’s continued scowl Kyouraku clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Don’t think I don’t recognise the hypocrisy of a hollow telling me my gaping anatomical mishaps are upsetting. Drink your sake.”

“I will, but only so I forget what the meat inside your eye hole looks like.” His mouth threatened to curve at the filthy look Kyouraku gave him. He held it down and drank his damn sake.

Somehow that display managed to break some of the ice. Blunted a few of the daggers Grimmjow sensed between them, anyway. Kyouraku left the heavy topics mostly alone for a while, and they drank in semi-companionable silence for long minutes, just listening to the faint whine of cicadas outside in the gardens and the occasional splutter of oil burning in the lanterns. It’d probably be relaxing, if Grimmjow could figure out how the hell to do that in Seireitei.

“Your honesty is refreshing, you know. I like that you don’t pull your punches. No bullshit, as it were.” By this point Kyouraku was sifting through his long tail of hair, frowning at the ends. Fucking hell, what was next? A bath? “Kurosaki Ichigo has the same traits, though I imagine he’s less abrasive than you when he speaks his mind. Is this what made you friends?”

“We’re not friends.”

“No?” Kyouraku blinked. His empty socket flapped a little. Grimmjow grabbed the leather patch and tossed it at him. “Then what are you? Surely you wouldn’t still call him an enemy.”

“He’s mine. Put that on before I fuckin’ puke.”

“How cruel you are to the maimed. Were you this sweet to Urahara Kisuke?” He did tie the patch back into place again. With it back on, he smiled faintly at Grimmjow’s frown. “Happy now?”

“Can’t you tell? I’m ecstatic.”

“Your constipated expression suggests otherwise. What do you mean, Kurosaki is yours?”

“What’s it to you?” Taste some of your own medicine, Grimmjow thought as Kyouraku’s expression turned bemused. “Don’t start acting like you give a shit about him. Besides, if you’re still trying to work out if you can trust me to make sure Las Noches holds up their end of any bargain, we’re doin’ this a little too fuckin’ early.”

“Oh, the purpose of this meeting wasn’t to determine if we could trust you. It was to see if you—and by extension Tier Harribel—could ever trust us.” Tugging his heavy flowered kimono up on his shoulder a little, Kyouraku smiled. “Call me an optimist, but I do think it’s possible. Soul Society has a lot to offer Las Noches. Even some things we’ve purposefully kept off the table.”

Sure it was. “So?”

“So with our future bond of trust in mind, what terms of agreement would you accept in exchange for never seeing Kurosaki Ichigo again?”  


* * *

 

Ichigo wanted to headbutt the table until he passed out.

“For the third time, Soul Society doesn’t have any sex doll mod souls. Or gigai. Even if they did, you wouldn’t get them! Who spread this rumour?”

“Ichimaru,” Apacci said, chewing angrily on what looked like a piece of hollow jerky. “He said the painted guy with the blue hair has a wardrobe full of them and they rent them out for big shinigami wank functions. So put ‘em on the list. I want one that looks like the big-titted woman with the pink scarf.” She narrowed her mismatched eyes. “Or the old fire man.”

Old fire man? Ichigo wanted to claw out his own eyes.

“Can we please move to actual things you guys need, instead of sex dolls?” He wracked his brain. “What about—repairing the towers and buildings so there’s protection from the sandstorms? The defensive walls? Electrical generators for lights and surveillance?”

“We already went through all that stuff,” Mila Rose said. “So while Harribel-sama is checking the perimeters, you get to listen to our demands.”

One entire day in Hueco Mundo and Ichigo was ready to end it all. After his introduction to Harribel and their brief discussion, Nel had taken him on a tour of the still-functioning parts of Las Noches that were open for him to use. It had been a depressingly short tour, considering how enormous he knew the fortress to be. Most of the lower levels were inaccessible from collapsed stone on the first descending levels, and smashing through them was more likely to start a domino effect that brought down the whole place. Somewhere beneath the rubble was the salvageable remains of a lot of equipment, they thought. Certainly a lot of personal chambers and tunnels the other espada had once used for their own varied amusements.

Instead, Ichigo was taken around a few sparse corridors and shown what was left: bathing quarters, a few dusty rooms that hadn’t been used in years, some extraordinarily large chambers on the ground levels that seemed to have no use whatsoever, the throne room, whatever they were using as a kitchen with its sole reishi-converting generator, and the bedrooms.

“This is where we all sleep,” Nel had explained, pointing to a row of closed doors that dotted the hallway. “Harribel-sama takes Aizen’s old chamber, and her fracción are given the adjoining room. Never enter these rooms without permission.” She pointed further down the hallway. “The next chamber is mine. You can go in there whenever you like; Pesche and Dondochakka always do.” She’d taken his wrist and tugged him down to the door, pushing it open to reveal a large bed with a couple of old cushions, some shelving, a pile of what looked like discarded clothing, and about twelve boxes of paperback books.

“What about Grimmjow’s room?” Ichigo had asked, still staring at the comfortable nest Nel called her own. “He’s got a room here too, right?”

Nel had turned to him with a nonplussed expression. “It’s the next one down, but—Ichigo, come back! We’re not allowed in there! He said it’s rigged!”

Ichigo, with one hand already on the door handle, abruptly froze. Would Grimmjow do something like that? Undoubtedly. But how did he know how to? What was inside? Stepping back, he stared at the door. It was a big stone thing, like most of the doors in Las Noches. There weren’t any noticeable buttons or triggers, just the handle. He was staring at it in frustration when Nel grabbed him in a headlock and began dragging him away.

“Don’t be a jerk, Ichigo. Let him have one thing away from us.” Her arm squeezed, almost choking his airway. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon anyway. You can ask him to show you then.”

Ichigo didn’t verbalise why Grimmjow coming back to find him would be a terrible turn of events.

With that tantalising mystery denied him, Ichigo had sulked his way down to the board room, or whatever passed for one. It was an old espada meeting room, anyway. It was there that Sung-Sun, Mila Rose and Apacci had started in on him with their list of important secondary requests for after the big stuff was agreed to. Most of it was depressingly sex-related, but kind of educational at the same time. Ichimaru Gin had been feeding them some really weird stories about what went on in Soul Society.

“Can we at least have some hot arrancar sex dolls?” Apacci said finally. “I’m sick of having to fantasise about these losers. Give me back my golden age of ninety brightly coloured numeros to choose from. These days I don’t even have a different one for each day of the week.”

“You could try including Grimmjow,” Sung-Sun said helpfully. Apacci snorted.

“Yeah, I did. Somehow even in the privacy of my own imagination he managed to brutally slaughter me.” She chewed harder. “Face it, girls; we’re doomed to have boring sex forever. Or at least until Harribel-sama finally gives us the royal treatment.”

Nel laughed. “Harribel-sama would never. She’s beautiful and powerful but most importantly, she has standards.”

“Unlike Nelliel,” Mila Rose said slyly. “We all know you and Grimmjow used to come back from your sparring looking like more than just a fight had gone on.”

Ichigo started. Unfortunately, it was noticeable enough that Nel darted him a panicked look—and completely misread his reaction.

“It only properly happened one time, and honestly I regret it so much. The sand was hideous.” She shook her head. “Plus Grimmjow was practically bleeding out the entire time. Points for dedication, I guess.” Blinking, she frowned faintly at them all. “Anyway, we agreed it was just a curiosity thing.”

Ichigo couldn’t quite stop staring at her.

Grimmjow and Nel. Nel and Grimmjow. Out in the sand after a battle, probably dirty and sweaty, bleeding through shredded clothes as they went for each other like starving animals. Grimmjow did always act like she pissed him off. What if it had been something else? Sexual tension, maybe? Fuck. It had never even crossed his mind before, but now it all just made sense. Grimmjow said he still went to Hueco Mundo, or at least he’d implied it to piss Ichigo off. Did he still hook up with Nel?

“Properly happened?” Ichigo repeated slowly, watching her across the table. She looked back with only a faint hint of awkwardness. “What does that mean? What happened the other times?”

“Hands down pants, you know,” Nel said instantly. “Some over the clothes action. Oh, one time he had Pantera’s hilt—but you don’t want to know that stuff. You look kind of blotchy, Ichigo.”

Blotchy? Blotchy didn’t even cover it. Ichigo felt like his entire face was combusting with confused jealousy. Grimmjow had never even said they were friends, let alone bothered to put a name to whatever they’d changed into those last few months. Maybe Ichigo was just Nel, but clueless about it. Hands down pants. Some over the clothes action. Curiosity.

Oh, shit.

No, Ichigo told himself firmly. It had to be more than that. More than just skin, anyway. They had—something. A weird undefinable something, and they argued more than they agreed, but Ichigo had seen the look on Grimmjow’s face when he looked at him. The Nel stuff had happened before.

_You’re my goal, you ginger piece of shit._

Not the nicest way of saying it, but Ichigo had wholeheartedly believed it at the time, shoved back against the brick wall of that bakery, half-drunk and feeling like Soul Society trash. Grimmjow’s eyes had been furious, but they’d been honest, too.

Grimmjow would never let him go.

“Let’s continue on with the demands,” Ichigo told them, and picked up the old quill. He kept his eyes on the old parchment. “After this, I need to go out into the dunes. There’s something I need to check out alone.” If anything could take his mind off stupid thoughts of Grimmjow, it was the living reishi in the sand.

“Not alone,” Harribel said from the doorway, her arms crossed over her plated chest. “Of all the legends of Hueco Mundo, all the tales of danger and secrets buried in the sand, one thing has always been true: you don’t ever go see Old White alone.”

The tres bestias flinched at the name. Across the table, Nel was slowly turning ashen, but she didn’t drop her gaze like the others. Forcing off the wariness of their reaction, Ichigo swallowed and turned to Harribel.

“What’s Old White?”

Pushing off the doorframe, Harribel approached. She never had much of an expression, and she still didn’t, but her eyes were unblinkingly serious as she stared down at him.

“Myth.” She extended her hand to him. “A legend as old as Hueco Mundo itself. Let us offer our greetings, Kurosaki Ichigo.

“It’s a good day to look God in the eye.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Urahara's Fight Club](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13652472) by [zephfair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephfair/pseuds/zephfair)




End file.
